Mariss Jansons

Always measured and dignified on the podium, the conductor Mariss Jansons managed to combine intensity with a superb feeling for the formal and dramatic shape of a work. Born in Riga in 1943, in the midst of the Nazi occupation (his mother giving birth while in hiding), he went with his father, the conductor Arvids Jansons, to Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) when he was 13. There he was taken up by the legendary conductor Yevgeny Mravinsky—not always the most generous of men when it came to other conductors. He studied at the Leningrad Conservatory. When the conductor Herbert von Karajan visited the USSR in 1968, he was so impressed with Jansons that he invited him to study with him in Berlin, but the Soviet authorities intervened to prevent it. Jansons went on to direct the Oslo Philharmonic and Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra to great international acclaim—his numerous recordings, especially of Beethoven, Bruckner, Mahler, Rachmaninoff and Shostakovich were warmly received throughout the world and won him numerous awards. After a severe heart attack in 1996, Jansons gave up long-haul flights and concentrated his work in Europe, directing first the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, then the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam. Though his health problems were well known, his death in St. Petersburg in 2019 came as a shock to many.