Andris Nelsons

The Boston Symphony Orchestra and their music director Andris Nelsons announce their upcoming album, on which they present their acclaimed Shostakovich symphony cycle to mark the 50th anniversary of the composer’s death in 1975.

Andris Nelsons and the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig continue their award-winning Bruckner cycle. This time the Symphonies are coupled with Wagner’s Meistersinger Prelude. The Orchestra and the Latvian Maestro recently announced the extension of their acclaimed partnership until 2027. In 2019 The Times (UK) raved about Andris Nelsons and the Gewandhausorchester’s visit to the BBC Proms, “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 […] 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.”

The newest addition to Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra's award-winning survey of Shostakovich's orchestral works takes on symphonies from the opposite ends of the composer's life. Shostakovich's first symphony, composed when he was only 19, announced his presence to the world, while his 15th seemingly grapples with his impending mortality. The Symphony No. 1 in F minor, Op. 10, was written as a graduation piece for his composition class at the Leningrad Conservatory. The composer's youth and the influences of Stravinsky and Prokofiev are evident in the work, but there are plenty of allusions to his later style. Slightly on the slower side overall, the emotion and forward motion of the music is not lost. The Symphony No. 15 in A major, Op. 141, written a few years before the composer's death, though not programmatic, seems to present a look at the cycle of life.

Andris Nelsons and the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig conclude their award-winning Bruckner cycle. Starting in 2017 with Symphony No. 3, the cycle has received countless superlatives and garnered the 2017 Edison Klassiek Award. Each symphony has been considerately paired with music by Wagner. In this final instalment of the cycle, Nelsons complements Symphonies Nos. 1 & 5 with the Prelude and Liebestod from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde".

Continuing his Bruckner cycle on Deutsche Grammophon with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Andris Nelsons presents the Symphony No. 7 in E major, paired with an excerpt from Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, "Siegfried's Funeral March" from Götterdämmerung. While this symphony is outwardly one of Bruckner's most approachable, particularly in its lyrical opening movement, its energetic Scherzo, and its jubilant Finale, its long, funereal Adagio makes the connection to the gloomy Ring selection more apparent, since this slow movement was composed in anticipation of Wagner's death. It also marks the first time that Bruckner used a quartet of the novel "Wagner tubas," and unusually wrote parts for cymbals, triangle, and timpani at the movement's climax, perhaps symbolizing Wagner's apotheosis.

Andris Nelsons, Kristine Opolais, and the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig form a Dvorák sound from the middle, singing the melodies that the composer concealed in all of the layers of his music with tender, warm, soft colors. Nelsons’ tempos remain calm and relaxed, allowing the omnipresent beauty of Dvorák’s music to unfold and flood the Gewandhaus. This is the first DVD and Blu-ray release of the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig under the baton of its new music director Andris Nelsons. Recorded at the Gewandhaus zu Leipzig, May 2017.

The Summer Night Concert of the Vienna Philharmonic is the world's biggest annual classical open-air concert that takes place in the magical setting of the Schönbrunn Palace Baroque park in Vienna (Concert date: June 16, 2022).