Andris Nelsons

»Nelsons set the tone for the evening: exuberance, urgency, tempos full of suppleness and momentum, rhythmic energy, contrapuntal transparency... The orchestra's response was full of devotion, playing with passion and utmost precision at every moment.« Bachtrack on the first concert of the BSO Festival "Beethoven & Romanticism", January 2025 Meticulous preparation and electrifying orchestral conducting distinguish Latvian conductor Andris Nelsons – he is Music Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Kapellmeister of the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig. He extended his contract with both orchestras in 2020: He is currently celebrating his eleventh season with the BSO and will lead the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig until at least the end of the 2026–27 season. Since 2011, Nelsons has regularly appeared as a guest conductor with the Gewandhausorchester, and in February 2018, he was finally appointed its 21st Gewandhauskapellmeister. During the festival celebrating the orchestra's 275th anniversary and his official inauguration, he conducted eleven concerts: He combined standard repertoire with three world premieres, giving the audience a taste of the energy and musical diversity he has since demonstrated in this position. Nelsons’ success is evident not only in critical acclaim and audience applause but also, and especially, in how quickly he can build close, productive relationships with experienced orchestral musicians. A connection formed immediately with the Boston Symphony Orchestra during their first collaboration in March 2011, a mutual affection that solidified over the following two seasons through performances at the Tanglewood Festival and in Symphony Hall in Boston. He was appointed the orchestra's 15th Music Director, with his tenure beginning in the 2014/15 season. With Nelsons’ appointment as Gewandhauskapellmeister, he also announced the collaboration between the Gewandhausorchester and the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO/GHO Alliance), which includes joint commissioning projects and educational initiatives, as well as collaborative and complementary programming. This year, the BSO's European tour culminates in Leipzig, where Nelsons will lead his two orchestras in a Shostakovich Festival celebrating the composer's 50th death anniversary. He will perform the 7th Symphony with both ensembles together. In May 2016, the conductor signed an exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon, paving the way for significant projects with the BSO and the Gewandhausorchester. Recently, Nelsons and the BSO completed their ten-year Shostakovich project, the first three volumes of which were awarded a Grammy. In addition to all 15 symphonies, it includes a series of stage works, the Festive Overture, and the Chamber Symphony. The project has now been expanded to include new recordings of the piano, violin, and cello concertos (with Yuja Wang, Baiba Skride, and Yo-Yo Ma), as well as the first commercial audio release in almost 20 years of his only full-length opera, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. In March 2025, Deutsche Grammophon released the complete collection digitally and as a 19-CD anthology. In another major project, Nelsons recorded the symphonies of Anton Bruckner with the Gewandhausorchester. In this series, each album pairs one of the symphonies with an excerpt from a Wagner opera. It began in 2017 with the release of Bruckner's Symphony No. 3 and the Overture to Wagner's Tannhäuser. The second album placed the Prelude to Lohengrin alongside Bruckner's Symphony No. 4, the third album the Symphony No. 7 alongside Siegfried's Funeral March from Götterdämmerung. Then came a double album with Bruckner's Symphonies Nos. 6 and 9, as well as Wagner's Siegfried Idyll and the Prelude to Parsifal, and another double album with Symphonies Nos. 2 and 8 and the Prelude to Act 1 of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. The sixth and final release couples Symphonies Nos. 1 and 5 with the Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde on a double album. The complete Bruckner/Wagner cycle was released digitally and as a 10-CD box set in October 2023. Furthermore, Nelsons – as part of Deutsche Grammophon's Beethoven 2020 campaign – recorded all of the composer's symphonies with the Vienna Philharmonic. The new cycle was released in October 2019 on five CDs and one Blu-ray Audio Disc, followed by a separate album with the Ninth Symphony in December. On the occasion of Sofia Gubaidulina's 90th birthday, Nelsons, together with the Gewandhausorchester, dedicated an album to her in October 2021 with three world premiere recordings of her works: Dialog: Ich und Du (with Vadim Repin), The Wrath of God, and The Light of the End. In May 2022, a transatlantic Richard Strauss project was released, a 7-CD edition featuring the composer's orchestral works, with three albums each from the BSO and the Gewandhausorchester, and a joint performance of the Festive Prelude. Pianist Yuja Wang and cellist Yo-Yo Ma are featured as soloists. Digitally, the Strauss works were thus available for the first time worldwide in Dolby Atmos. Recently, Nelsons has made various recordings with leading pianists and fellow DG artists. In 2023, he recorded two orchestral works with Lang Lang and his wife Gina Alice with the Gewandhausorchester: Lang Lang – Saint-Saëns, released in March 2024, presents their interpretation of Carnival of the Animals and the French composer's Second Piano Concerto. In April 2024, Yuja Wang joined Nelsons and the BSO at Boston's Symphony Hall; their concert featuring Messiaen's Turangalîla-Symphonie was recorded and released digitally in December of that year (the CD will follow in July 2025). The Financial Times praised Nelsons for a "convincingly shaped" performance in which Yuja shone "alongside a Boston Symphony Orchestra that could hardly have played better." And with Seong-Jin Cho, Nelsons and the BSO performed and recorded Ravel's two piano concertos. Their album was released in February 2025, and it is also part of the Deluxe Edition of Cho's complete works of Ravel's piano music, scheduled for May 2025. "When you're on stage with the BSO, you get the impression that the French spirit is in their blood," says Cho. "It was very inspiring to perform with them and make these recordings. And working with Andris is always a joy, of course." In the coming months, Nelsons' focus will be on Shostakovich: He will give concerts with the BSO in Boston and Carnegie Hall (April) as well as on the BSO's European tour to Vienna, Riga, Prague, and finally to the Shostakovich Festival in Leipzig. The latter will take place from May 15 to June 1 as an extensive retrospective of the composer's oeuvre, during which Nelsons will conduct a complete cycle of symphonies, divided between the Gewandhausorchester, the festival orchestra of young musicians, and the BSO. In June, he will then give three concerts with the Munich Philharmonic in Munich and Heidelberg with works by Berlioz, Debussy, and Wagner. Andris Nelsons was born in Riga in 1978, the son of a musical family. He took piano lessons as a child and later made rapid progress as a trumpeter. As a teenager, he performed with the Latvian National Opera Orchestra and gained insight into professional orchestral operations. He gained early conducting experience under the guidance of Mariss Jansons, who became his teacher and mentor. At 21, Nelsons conducted for the first time at the Latvian National Opera, and two years later he became its Music Director. The visionary performances of German and Slavic music that the young conductor led in Latvia and as chief conductor of the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie did not go unnoticed in Great Britain and led to his appointment as Music Director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (2008–15). During his years at the helm of the CBSO, Nelsons established himself as the highly sought-after conductor he is today, and his services to music in Great Britain were recognized with an honorary OBE, presented to him in October 2018 at the Royal Festival Hall. 3/2025