"One of the most exciting and sought-after conductors working today..." (The Guardian)
Andris Nelsons is Music Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Gewandhauskapellmeister of the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig. These two positions, in addition to his leadership of a pioneering alliance between both institutions, have firmly established Grammy Award-winning Nelsons as one of the most renowned and innovative conductors on the international scene today.
Andris Nelsons conducted with concise focus and vigor and elicited the orchestra both tonal beauty and technical precision and visible enthusiasm.
Nelsons’ positions in Boston and Leipzig commenced in the 2014/15 season and in February 2018, respectively. Autumn 2019 marked a ground-breaking highlight for Nelsons, the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig: three performances featuring musicians from both institutions within one joint orchestra were given at Boston’s Symphony Hall as part of the alliance between the two orchestras. In 2020, this unique partnership between both orchestras culminated in another highlight, a joint release of the major symphonic works by Richard Strauss for Deutsche Grammophon, including Strauss’ Festliches Präludium jointly performed by musicians from both orchestras. To mark the release, Nelsons and the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig completed a residency tour to London, Hamburg, Vienna and Paris to perform two all-Strauss programmes in May 2022.
Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra begin their 2023/24 season with a major European tour, performing in a number of prestigious summer festivals, including the BBC Proms, the Lucerne and Salzburg Festivals. In January 2024, the BSO and Nelsons will perform two guest concerts at Carnegie Hall with pianist Seong-Jin Cho and a concert performance of Shostakovich’s opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. This season, the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig embark on two tours under Nelsons’ direction: to Asia in November 2023, with concerts in Taiwan, Korea and Japan, and a European tour in March 2024, with three symphonic programmes celebrating the works of Tchaikovsky. Nelsons will also continue his guest appearances this season, performing with the Berliner Philharmoniker together with violinist Baiba Skride, and will return Vienna for performances with Wiener Philharmoniker in June, including the annual Summer Night Concert at Schönbrunn Palace. Nelsons will also conduct the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic for concerts featuring trumpeter Håkan Hardenberger.
Nelsons leaned forward into the sound, sculpting the music with surpassing tenderness.
Andris Nelsons has an exclusive recording relationship with Deutsche Grammophon, which has paved the way for three landmark projects with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig and the Wiener Philharmoniker. Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra partner on recordings of the complete Shostakovich symphonies and the opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District – this cycle is already the recipient of four GRAMMY awards in the categories Best Orchestral Performance and Best Engineered Album. Furthermore, Nelsons and the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig continue their critically acclaimed Bruckner symphonic cycle. Both cycles released their fifth instalments in 2021. Nelsons’ recordings of Beethoven’s complete symphonies with the Wiener Philharmoniker, in celebration of the composer’s 250th birthday, were released in October 2019.
Mr. Nelsons has brought a jolt of youthful energy, along with charisma and accomplishment [to the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall]. The audience gave Mr. Nelsons and the players an enormous ovation. Whatever the future, for now the Boston Symphony has placed its trust in a young dynamo.
Born in Riga in 1978 into a family of musicians, Andris Nelsons began his career as a trumpeter in the Latvian National Opera Orchestra whilst studying conducting. He was Music Director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra from 2008-2015, Principal Conductor of the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie in Herford, Germany 2006-2009 and Music Director of the Latvian National Opera 2003-2007.