Born in Riga in 1978, Andris Nelsons grew up in a musical family and began his career as a trumpet player with the Orchestra of the Latvian National Opera. At the same time he studied conducting with Alexander Titov at the St. Petersburg Conservatory and undertook private instruction with Mariss Jansons. In 2003 the young Nelsons was appointed Principal Conductor of the Latvian National Opera, holding that position until 2007. Since the 2008-09 season he has headed the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, succeeding Simon Rattle and Sakari Oramo. Within the last three seasons Nelsons has made his debut at numerous major opera houses and with the leading international orchestras. He has already been a frequent guest artist at the Vienna Staatsoper and the Berlin Staatsoper; the Metropolitan Opera in New York invited him to conduct a series of performances of Tchaikovsky’s Pique Dame, while the Royal Opera House in London engaged him for Madama Butterfly. In the summer of 2010 Nelsons opened the Bayreuth Festival with a new production of Lohengrin staged by Hans Neuenfels, which he will again conduct this year. The 2010-11 season also brought his debuts with the Berlin Philharmonic, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre de Paris, and the New York Philharmonic. In addition, Nelsons completed a tour of Japan with the Vienna Philharmonic, while he was also engaged once again for concerts with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. His first two CDs of works by Beethoven, Berg, and Tchaikovsky each received the German Record Critics’ Prize; recently he released a recording of Richard Strauss’s Alpine Symphony.
LUCERNE FESTIVAL debut on 31 August 2009 with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in works by Britten, Berlioz, Debussy, and Ravel.
August 2011