Farewell
We learned today that Mariss Jansons, a long-time music director of the Bavarian Radio Symphony, and before that the Oslo Philharmonic, has died at the age of 76.
For those of you who don't know who Jansons was (and remains, through his recordings and broadcasts), I can tell you that he was one of the finest conductors of the last 50 years, almost entirely in the concert hall, although he did make occasional forays into opera.
Jansons came by conducting through heredity, having been the son of Arvid Jansons, himself an extraordinary maestro. Arvid was Mariss's first teacher and, unfortunately, also passed on to his son a bad heart, which was the cause of death for them both.
Jansons was a Latvian, and grew up under the yoke of first the Nazis and then the Soviets, before deciding to become a musician. Jansons's first mentors were two giants of the podium, Yevgeny Mravinsky in (then) Leningrad and Herbert von Karajan in Berlin. He managed a successful synthesis of two different conducting styles - Mravinsky's incisiveness and literalism with Karajan's enormous sound and cushioned tempos.
Before leading in Bavaria, Jansons also was the music director in Pittsburgh and at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. His repertoire in both cases was comprised mainly of the Russians, and his performances of Tchaikovsky can arguably be called definitive by many. The superb set of Tchaikovsky's symphonies with Oslo is still available as a stream or on CD (I have them on LP, too).
As he aged, Jansons played more Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, Haydn, and Mozart. His performances of these composers, along with music by Sibelius and Rachmaninov, are very good, his recording of Haydn's Symphony 88 with the Vienna Philharmonic my own favorite of the piece.
There are many, many examples of Jansons's work on YouTube, but I will draw your attention to one, in particular, made when the young Jansons was leading the Oslo Philharmonic in Tchaikovsky's 4th symphony. It is a spectacular performance, well-balanced and tonally rich and every note in the score sounds.
What I especially like about the performance is that, at its conclusion, the normally reserved Swedes give Jansons an ovation. The orchestra does, too, along with what is known among musicians as a "tusch", or fanfare of salute. I have only heard an orchestra do that one other time when the Chicago Symphony did it for Eugene Ormandy in 1982.
Jansons, like Mravinsky, his father, Karajan, and Ormandy, now belong to God, but like Irving told us, "the melody lingers on".
For those of you who don't know who Jansons was (and remains, through his recordings and broadcasts), I can tell you that he was one of the finest conductors of the last 50 years, almost entirely in the concert hall, although he did make occasional forays into opera.
Jansons came by conducting through heredity, having been the son of Arvid Jansons, himself an extraordinary maestro. Arvid was Mariss's first teacher and, unfortunately, also passed on to his son a bad heart, which was the cause of death for them both.
Jansons was a Latvian, and grew up under the yoke of first the Nazis and then the Soviets, before deciding to become a musician. Jansons's first mentors were two giants of the podium, Yevgeny Mravinsky in (then) Leningrad and Herbert von Karajan in Berlin. He managed a successful synthesis of two different conducting styles - Mravinsky's incisiveness and literalism with Karajan's enormous sound and cushioned tempos.
Before leading in Bavaria, Jansons also was the music director in Pittsburgh and at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. His repertoire in both cases was comprised mainly of the Russians, and his performances of Tchaikovsky can arguably be called definitive by many. The superb set of Tchaikovsky's symphonies with Oslo is still available as a stream or on CD (I have them on LP, too).
As he aged, Jansons played more Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, Haydn, and Mozart. His performances of these composers, along with music by Sibelius and Rachmaninov, are very good, his recording of Haydn's Symphony 88 with the Vienna Philharmonic my own favorite of the piece.
There are many, many examples of Jansons's work on YouTube, but I will draw your attention to one, in particular, made when the young Jansons was leading the Oslo Philharmonic in Tchaikovsky's 4th symphony. It is a spectacular performance, well-balanced and tonally rich and every note in the score sounds.
What I especially like about the performance is that, at its conclusion, the normally reserved Swedes give Jansons an ovation. The orchestra does, too, along with what is known among musicians as a "tusch", or fanfare of salute. I have only heard an orchestra do that one other time when the Chicago Symphony did it for Eugene Ormandy in 1982.
Jansons, like Mravinsky, his father, Karajan, and Ormandy, now belong to God, but like Irving told us, "the melody lingers on".
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