Andris Nelsons is music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Gewandhauskapellmeister in Leipzig. Through these two positions he has created a pioneering alliance between the orchestras, which has established him as one of the most innovative conductors working on today’s international music scene. The first highlight of the collaboration was joint concerts in Boston along with a recording of the complete orchestral works of Richard Strauss. Since then, the groundbreaking alliance has led to joint commissions, educational collaborations and exchanges of musicians.
In 2024/25 he performed new works by Thomas Adès and Carlos Simon with the Gewandhaus Orchestra and toured Europe with the duo Lucas and Arthur Jussen. He celebrated his tenth anniversary in Boston with a Beethoven symphony cycle, a residency at Carnegie Hall and a European tour. He also took the Boston Symphony Orchestra to the Shostakovich Festival in Leipzig, where in addition to performing Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District with the Gewandhaus Orchestra, he conducted the complete Shostakovich symphonies with both orchestras. As part of the festival, he also conducted the new festival orchestra, made up of musicians from the Mendelssohn Orchestra Academy and the Tanglewood Music Center, whose conducting department he has led since 2024.
Andris Nelsons has worked regularly with the Berlin Philharmonic, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Concertgebouw Orchestra, and has appeared many times as a guest conductor at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and at the Bayreuth and Salzburg Festivals. In 2024/25 his guest engagements included Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony with the Berlin Philharmonic, and an extensive Asian tour with the Vienna Philharmonic and the soloists Midori, Seong-Jin Cho and Yefim Bronfman.
Andris Nelsons is an exclusive recording artist with Deutsche Grammophon. He released his recording of the complete Beethoven symphonies with the Vienna Philharmonic in October 2019. He has recorded all of Bruckner’s symphonies with the Gewandhaus Orchestra; their recording of the Third Symphony received an Edison Classical Award. His cycle of recordings of works by Shostakovich with the Boston Symphony Orchestra includes all the symphonies along with Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, and has won four Grammys.
