The sound is tremendously sensual - the great tradition is resonating with it.

“The sound is tremendously sensual – the great tradition is resonating with it.” NDR

Nelsons led the work with a firm sense of momentum while highlighting its many details.

“Nelsons led the work with a firm sense of momentum while highlighting its many details.” “Nelsons navigated the orchestra and the soloist...

With Bruckner, Andris Nelsons follows in the footsteps of Masur and Blomstedt. But he surpasses them both in dynamic sharpness, highly emotional immersion and, in view of the consistently moderate tempi, in the goosebump feeling of infinite and unswerving flow. No brutal caesuras cut the musical line. Despite all their passions, they are deliberate interpretations, but not calculated and even less controlled by effects. Cosmically perfect in form, the Ninth, which has remained a torso, especially has it all in its visionary, redemption-free archaic. Even Karajan applauds benevolently from his place at the Right of God, of course also for the Wagner excerpts.

“With Bruckner, Andris Nelsons follows in the footsteps of Masur and Blomstedt. But he surpasses them both in dynamic sharpness, highly emotional...

And Gewandhaus conductor Andris Nelsons shows why he is also in demand worldwide as an opera conductor: he carries the singers on his hands, gives them enormous freedom and yet follows them safely with the orchestra, which he keeps supple and flexible.

“And Gewandhaus conductor Andris Nelsons shows why he is also in demand worldwide as an opera conductor: he carries the singers on his hands, gives...

Nelsons is entirely in his element in "La Mer", in this intoxication of colours and reflexes, of dazzling nuances and mirages, of controlled eruptions and cultivated breakers. And also his Saxon orchestra follows him in blind (self) trust with subtly animated tutti sound, wonderful details and enchanting solos (English horn, trumpet) through this precious seascape of the soul, followed by the first sharp cries of the season.

“Nelsons is entirely in his element in “La Mer”, in this intoxication of colours and reflexes, of dazzling nuances and mirages, of controlled...

All of this subtlety depends on fine execution. He [Bruckner] really does have to be played very, very well if the spaces that suddenly open up around the notes are not to seem a slackening of tension. It was one of the outstanding features of Nelsons’s reading - among the best Bruckner interpretations I've heard - that they never did. Every standstill was pregnant with consequence; and, while one could relish the beauty of sound (I was forever longing for the next beautiful phrase from the violins), one felt the pacing hidden in the background. Detail was luxurious, but architecture paramount, and Nelsons’s unshowy approach profoundly impressive. One could almost believe one had come across that impossible thing: the ego-less conductor. No exhibitionism here. He revealed Bruckner, with a relentless vision that takes us into the strangest places, as greater than ever.

“All of this subtlety depends on fine execution. He [Bruckner] really does have to be played very, very well if the spaces that suddenly open up...

Conductor Andris Nelson's contact with the orchestra also seemed to be more characterized by a collegial spirit than by a search for a perfect and perfectly executed statement. One can only rave about the precise softness of the brass sound.

“Conductor Andris Nelson’s contact with the orchestra also seemed to be more characterized by a collegial spirit than by a search for a perfect and...

And here in Lucerne, starting with the low, primitive sound of the rolling double basses, through to the effervescent flutes, the Gewandhausorchester took the 1919 version of the work like a second skin. Nelsons was on top form, poking the strings into their clockwork rhythms and the horns into a brassy bombast, so much so that in the huge conclusion, he used what almost looked like the muscular punch of a professional boxer. That said, this Firebird could hardly have been tackled with more conviction; in short, this performance was electrifying.

“And here in Lucerne, starting with the low, primitive sound of the rolling double basses, through to the effervescent flutes, the Gewandhausorchester...

Siegfried Idyll is literally breathed into life by Andris Nelsons, cueing the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra to commune with the music, bringing a very expressive beauty and contentment, ravishing the listener’s senses with a mix of poignancy and poetry (the latter characteristic suggesting gentle breezes and palm trees) and further enhanced by a finely-judged array of dynamics: twenty-one minutes of bliss.

“Siegfried Idyll is literally breathed into life by Andris Nelsons, cueing the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra to commune with the music, bringing a very...

The nebulous sounds surfacing at the beginning of the piece, symbolizing the (still) deep silence of the water, were played by the Gewandhaus Orchestra in such a floating tenderness that one wanted to hold one's breath. With pianissimos of the finest quality, Nelsons and the Gewandhausorchester took the qualities of the Elbphilharmonie acoustic to its limits. But also when the wave movements finally sloshed through the woodwind registers, the beatings of the timpani gave a hint of danger and finally the brass fanfares announced the happy arrival of the ship, the sound balance of this orchestra was unique and precise.

“The nebulous sounds surfacing at the beginning of the piece, symbolizing the (still) deep silence of the water, were played by the Gewandhaus Orchestra...

For sixteen months, Andris Nelsons has been chief conductor of the world's oldest bourgeois concert orchestra. He treats it with caution and awe. It is an archive of knowledge, sounds and feelings. The musicians, who can tell a lot of stories about various conductors, their irascible anger, their linguistic weapons of intimidation, their strategies to establish authority, are currently enthusiastic about Nelson's gentleness, his human warmth, but also his artistic spontaneity, his interpretational unpredictability in a good sense.

“For sixteen months, Andris Nelsons has been chief conductor of the world’s oldest bourgeois concert orchestra. He treats it with caution and awe....

"In Petrushka, Nelsons worked like a realist painter, drawing attention to the many solos and small ensemble passages ... A tone poem as much as a ballet score, Petrushka, in Nelsons' hands, brimmed with lively characters and scenes."

“Aether was once a popular and compelling scientific concept. Nineteenth-century physicists believed it filled the space between stars, and ancient...

"Nelsons was able to express both the innocence and the foreshadowing of experience Shostakovich weaves through the first movement by simply allowing the music the space to speak for itself."

“Nelsons was able to express both the innocence and the foreshadowing of experience Shostakovich weaves through the first movement by simply allowing the...

"But Nelsons’ fluent direction suggested that music was indeed the master. The orchestra responded beautifully to his waving gestures. The soft attacks and silky phrases the conductor conjured carried sweet sadness, and the solo passages shimmered."

“In the final scene of Richard Strauss’s Capriccio, Countess Madeleine must choose between the writer Olivier and the composer Flamand. The feelings...

Where the Lucerne Festival Orchestra sounds like one of those bright 21st century glass skyscrapers, the Gewandhaus sounds like a sumptuous Gothic palace that has been regularly restored, but has kept its original colours and materials. The strings have the dark patina of antique furniture, the matt brass evokes an organ with wide and deep stops, never flashy. Andris Nelsons' warm direction trusts musicians whose mutual listening is permanent, his little aesthetic body language invites more than it imposes. The result is a luminous Bruckner Eighth, which flows from the source and trusts the music, without seeking to prove anything. And this is does a lot of good.

“Where the Lucerne Festival Orchestra sounds like one of those bright 21st century glass skyscrapers, the Gewandhaus sounds like a sumptuous Gothic...

"Performances of great strength and stature, peerlessly played and recorded; the pinnacle of Nelsons’ cycle thus far."

“This, the third instalment of Andris Nelsons’ Boston cycle, is also the finest. He sheds new and startling light on the Fourth and delivers an...

Mr. Nelsons and the Bostonians maintained precision while relishing this finale’s inconstant rhythms — dances that capriciously recalled golden-age Hollywood and the Middle East.

“Throughout, Andris Nelsons was the master craftsman, giving directions that were always crisp but varied in breadth from fine tuning up to strokes so broad as to be violent."

“…there’s no doubting the power and theatricality that Nelsons brings to this music. …the finale was irresistible, sweeping all before it on a flood of...

Nelsons, a leading Puccini interpreter, provided a remarkably sensitive account of the death scene, avoiding melodramatics yet observing the composer's skull-and-crossbones notation in the score's margin, requesting a "long pause" to mark the moment of Mimi's passing. The freeze-frame suspension of music and action was breath-stopping, and ineffably sad.

Andris Nelsons was the champion of the evening, drawing luminescent playing from the Covent Garden orchestra.

The Act 1 Prelude – an evocation of The Grail – was played with the curtain down and the house lights half up, gauzy strings shimmering and beautifully...

Over this coolly calculated staging an inspiring glow of light and warmth shines from the orchestra pit by the baton of Andris Nelsons.

Wagner conducting of this quality, so well-paced and richly involving, gloriously played and sung by the Royal Opera orchestra and a bolstered chorus, does not...

Nelsons’ gloriously comprehensive conducting, full of moments of quiet, rapt intensity and surging, tremulous excitement, superbly realised by the ROH Orchestra, is one of this new production’s biggest plusses of all.

"A premiere and a persuasive start to Brahms cycle from Nelsons and BSO [...]

The Andris Nelsons era with the Boston Symphony Orchestra was largely grounded in the standard repertoire in the music director’s inaugural season. Yet new...

"BSO offers poignant election-night respite [...]

Spirits were calm for the most part, as the first half kicked off with the cinematic fanfare that began the world premiere of Eric Nathan’s “the space of a...

"A Delicious ‘Rosenkavalier’ in Boston [...]

In a city regularly starved of quality opera, Andris Nelsons’s habit of conducting Strauss with his Boston Symphony Orchestra can only be welcome. First...

"Rosenkavalier Shimmers at Symphony Hall [...]

Many a moon has passed since Bostonians were last offered the rich feast that is Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier. Last night that famine was assuaged in...

"The BSO opens its season with a Russian bang [...]

The opening program for the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s 2016-2017 season was all-Russian, and even without any Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, or Rachmaninoff on...

Andris Nelsons at the helm on two Gramophone Award-winning albums in 2016

Read the entire feature via Gramophone Magazine “let me tell you” – Andris Nelsons (conductor), Barbara Hannigan (soprano), and the Bavarian...

"Tanglewood: For Nelsons, last comes first [...]

On his arrival every summer at Tanglewood, Andris Nelsons submits to a ritual round of interviews with the media […] He lets the music speak for...

"Nelsons, BSO stand strong in uncompromising Mahler Ninth [...]

Leading the Boston Symphony Orchestra Thursday night, Andris Nelsons had the air of a man fiercely concentrating on a challenging task: crafting a coherent...

"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."

"Album of the week" - Shostakovich: scandalously successful."

"Nelsons leaned forward into the sound, sculpting the music with surpassing tenderness."

"Nelsons’s performance [Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10] is mighty, marked by a wonderful nose for atmosphere [...]

What makes Nelsons so lethally impressive here is the precision with which he addresses every accent, every ferocious sforzando. He is the most rhythmic of...

'This [Shostakovich’s 10th Symphony] is thrilling music-making, already whetting the appetite for the next instalment: Symphonies 5, 8, and 9 next spring [Deutsche Grammophon]."

"This was a persuasive account [of Bruckner’s Symphony No. 7]: texturally vital, musically alert, and sonically rich. […] Nelsons’s interpretation found a charismatic balance between weight and transparency of detail, from the diaphanous sheen of the pianissimo tremolos to the radiant brass-heavy climaxes of the first and second movements."

"Every time I’ve seen him conduct - in Boston, Tanglewood, New York, and Bayreuth - he has set off brushfires of intensity. […] Nelsons produces full-body impact: instead of shattering about your ears, the sound engulfs you. He is a master at controlling dynamics to create a kinetic, fluctuating mass."

"Nelsons’s Brummies [the CBSO] pump fresh air through the notes. […] His sunrise is sublime in the original, uncorrupted meaning of that word – an unfathomable beauty so awe-inspiring that it terrifies with the same intensity it beguiles [...]

A sensibly paced tempo that refuses to let Strauss’s material become weighed down by its own import helps; […] Nelsons keeps a discreet distance, letting...

"Andris Nelsons conducted with keen focus and vigor, eliciting tonal beauty, technical precision and obvious engagement from the orchestra."

"Friday’s concert, the last of Mr. Nelsons’s first subscription run [with the Boston Symphony Orchestra], was hardly lethargic. With an unusually large audience, the orchestra was engaged and the conductor infectiously dynamic with performances of Beethoven, Bartok and Tchaikovsky [...]

It was just his fourth concert in his new role, but it felt as if Mr. Nelsons had been working under Symphony Hall’s golden proscenium arch for years. The...

"Nelsons’ treatment of the Fourth [Symphony of Beethoven with the CBSO] was startling. Like all outstanding conductors, he has the precious ability to conjure something unexpectedly brilliant out of thin air [...]

He did it a year ago in another matinee concert with the CBSO in Dvořák’s Eighth Symphony, and Beethoven’s Fourth here was cut from the same cloth. Its...

"For his part, Nelsons has deeply internalized this score [of Salome by Strauss], its idiom, and its pacing, to the point of almost dancing along on Thursday during his delicately shaped 'Dance of the Seven Veils' [...]

Balances were for the most part carefully managed, allowing for a striking clarity of detail while also setting up for a handful of truly hair-raising moments...