Andris Nelsons

Born in Riga in 1978, Andris Nelsons grew up in a family of musicians and began his career as a trumpeter at the Latvian National Opera. At the same time, he trained as a conductor, studying with Alexander Titov in St. Petersburg and taking private lessons with Mariss Jansons. In 2003, Nelsons was appointed Chief Conductor of the Latvian National Opera; from 2008 to June 2015, he helmed the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. He has been Music Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra since 2014 and has also held the position of Kapellmeister of the Leipzig Gewandhaus since 2018. Nelsons is a regular guest with many leading international orchestras and at major opera houses. He has conducted at the Vienna, Munich, and Berlin State Operas; the Metropolitan Opera in New York; the Royal Opera House in London; and the Bayreuth Festival. He regularly performs with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic Orchestras, conducting the latter’s New Year’s Concert in 2020 and its Summer Night Concert in Schönbrunn in 2022 and 2024. Lucerne Festival honored Nelsons by naming him “artiste étoile” in 2012 and entrusted him with several concerts by the Lucerne Festival Orchestra in 2014-15. The Shostakovich cycle that Nelsons is recording with the Boston Symphony Orchestra has already won four Grammy Awards; he will complete it in 2024 with the opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. He has recorded a Bruckner cycle with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, which appeared as a complete box set in the fall of 2023; and in the Beethoven year 2020, he published all nine symphonies with the Vienna Philhar­monic; 2022 saw the release of a box set featuring the major orchestral works of Ri­chard Strauss as part of a joint project with his two orchestras in Boston and Leipzig. Andris Nelsons was awarded the International Shostakovich Prize in 2019.

Lucerne Festival debut on 31 August 2009 with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in a program of works by Britten, Berlioz, Debussy, and Ravel.

July 2024