Biography
“From the conducting of Andris Nelsons it was clear that he believes in this music and affirms this symphony [Shostakovich’s No. 11] as a triumphant victory over dark, hostile forces – a message which remains as relevant today as it was at the beginning of the twentieth century.”
Seen and Heard International reviewing Nelsons and the BSO at Leipzig’s Shostakovich Festival, May 2025
Galvanising leadership, meticulous preparation and performances that flow straight from the heart are all central to the art of Andris Nelsons. Now a five-time GRAMMY®-winner, the Latvian conductor is Music Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Gewandhauskapellmeister of the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig. Currently celebrating his 12th season with the BSO, he is now set to remain in post with the Gewandhausorchester until the end of the 2031‑32 season.
Nelsons’ appointment as Gewandhauskapellmeister heralded the launch in 2017 of a partnership between the Leipzig and Boston orchestras known as the BSO/GHO Alliance. This has encompassed co‑commissions, joint recordings, musician exchanges and educational initiatives, as well as shared and complementary programming.
In May 2016, the conductor signed an exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon, paving the way for landmark projects with both the BSO and the Gewandhausorchester.
He led the BSO in a hugely acclaimed, decade-long Shostakovich project, the first three volumes of which were all honoured with GRAMMY® Awards. In addition to presenting all 15 symphonies, several pieces of incidental music, the Festive Overture and the Chamber Symphony, the project was expanded to encompass the first recording in more than two decades of Shostakovich’s only full-length opera, Lady Macbeth of the Mtensk District, and his complete piano, violin and cello concertos with soloists Yuja Wang, Baiba Skride and Yo-Yo Ma. The collaboration with Ma was the winner in the Best Classical Instrumental Solo category at the 68th GRAMMY® Awards. Marking the end of the project and the 50th anniversary of Shostakovich’s death, as well as Nelsons’ 10th anniversary with the BSO, DG issued the complete Shostakovich recordings digitally and as a 19-CD set in March 2025. The Violin Concertos were released as a digital album at the same time, the Cello Concertos and Piano Concertos in all formats in April and May 2025 respectively.
A second large-scale project saw Nelsons record the symphonies of Anton Bruckner with the Gewandhausorchester. The series, each of whose recordings juxtaposed Bruckner’s music with an excerpt from a Wagner opera, was launched to critical acclaim in 2017 with the release of Symphony No. 3, coupled with the Overture to Tannhäuser. The second album paired Bruckner’s Symphony No. 4 with the Lohengrin Prelude; the third featured Symphony No. 7 and Siegfried’s Funeral March from Götterdämmerung; the fourth, a double album, comprised Bruckner’s Sixth and Ninth Symphonies together with the Siegfried Idyll and Prelude to Parsifal; and the fifth, another double album, presented the Second and Eighth Symphonies with the Prelude to Act One from Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. The sixth and final double album coupled Symphonies Nos. 1 and 5 with the Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde and was issued in February 2022. The complete Bruckner/Wagner recordings were released digitally and as a 10-CD box set in October 2023.
For Deutsche Grammophon’s Beethoven 2020 celebrations Nelsons joined forces with the Wiener Philharmoniker to record the composer’s complete symphonies. Presented on five CDs and a single Blu‑ray Audio disc, the new cycle was released in October 2019, with Symphony No. 9 released as a standalone album two months later.
Nelsons also paid tribute to the composer Sofia Gubaidulina on the occasion of her 90th birthday. He conducted the Gewandhausorchester in the world premiere recordings of three of Gubaidulina’s works: Dialog: Ich und Du (with soloist Vadim Repin), The Wrath of God and The Light of the End. The album was released in October 2021.
As part of a 2022 focus on the music of Richard Strauss, Nelsons recorded a 7-CD set of the composer’s orchestral works with the BSO and the Gewandhausorchester, as well as soloists Yuja Wang and Yo-Yo Ma. In addition to recording three albums each, the orchestras came together for a joint performance of the Festliches Präludium. This hugely ambitious project was released in May 2022 and became the first Strauss orchestral cycle available in Dolby Atmos.
Nelsons has recently made recordings with some of the world’s leading pianists. In 2023, he and the Gewandhausorchester set down two orchestral works with Lang Lang and his wife Gina Alice. Released in March 2024, Lang Lang – Saint-Saëns featured their readings of Carnival of the Animals and the French composer’s Second Piano Concerto.
In April 2024, Yuja Wang joined Nelsons and the BSO at Symphony Hall to perform Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie. The concert was recorded live and issued digitally in December 2024 and on CD in July 2025. The Financial Times praised Nelsons for a “cogently paced” performance, in which Yuja shone “alongside a never-better Boston Symphony Orchestra”. The recording went on to win the GRAMMY® Award for Best Orchestral Performance in February 2026.
Nelsons and the BSO also performed and recorded Ravel’s two piano concertos with Seong-Jin Cho. Released in February 2025, their album formed part of the deluxe edition of Cho’s complete Ravel piano music issued three months later. Limelight magazine was among those to praise the release: “Cho revels in the myriad colours, textures and nuances of the French composer and he has wonderful support from Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.”
The conductor’s latest recordings see him back at the helm of the Gewandhausorchester for a set of Mendelssohn’s complete symphonies and two completed oratorios, Elijah and St Paul. Nelsons and the orchestra are joined by the MDR-Rundfunkchor in the oratorios and Symphony No. 2, “Lobgesang” (Hymn of Praise). The soloists are sopranos Elsa Benoit and Christiane Karg (Symphony No. 2), Julia Kleiter (St Paul), Golda Schultz (Elijah); alto Wiebke Lehmkuhl (St Paul, Elijah); tenor Werner Güra (all three works); baritone Andrè Schuen (Elijah) and bass Georg Zeppenfeld (St Paul). The recordings will be released digitally and as a 7CD capbox set on 27 March 2026.
Andris Nelsons’ forthcoming engagements include European and US appearances with the Wiener Philharmoniker, performing three different programmes, the first pairing symphonies by Mozart and Dvořák, the second featuring music by Sibelius, R. Strauss and György Kurtág, and the third presenting Bartók’s Piano Concerto No. 3, with Lang Lang, and Mahler’s Symphony No. 1. The concerts take place in Vienna (starting at the Musikverein, where Nelsons is currently Artist in Focus), Frankfurt, New York, Boston, Naples, West Palm Beach and Orlando, Florida (14 February−12 March 2026). Returning to Boston, Nelsons joins the BSO for a series of concerts at Symphony Hall featuring works by Schumann, Tchaikovsky, John Adams, Dvořák, Outi Tarkiainen, Mozart, Sibelius, Smetana and Grieg (19 March−8 April), and two evenings at New York’s Carnegie Hall (9 & 10 April). He also concludes his Mahler cycle with the Wiener Philharmoniker with performances of Symphony No. 3 (Vienna Musikverein, 1–3 May) and No. 8 (Vienna Konzerthaus, 9–11 May).
Andris Nelsons was born into a musical family in Riga in November 1978. He studied piano during his childhood and later made swift progress as a trumpeter, performing with the Latvian National Opera Orchestra as a teenager and developing a player’s understanding of the orchestral profession. His early conducting experience was shaped under the supervision of Mariss Jansons, who became his teacher and guide. Nelsons made his conducting debut with the Latvian National Opera at the age of 21 and became the company’s music director two years later. News of the young conductor’s visionary performances of German and Slavic repertoire in Latvia and as Principal Conductor of the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie reached the UK and led to his appointment as Music Director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (2008–15). Nelsons’ years at the helm of the CBSO established him as the sought-after conductor he is today, and his services to music in the UK were recognised with the award of an honorary OBE, presented to him at the Royal Festival Hall in October 2018.
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