Conductor renowned for performances of Mahler, Strauss and the
Russian romantics with the world’s great orchestrasIn any league table of great conductors, the name of the Latvian-born maestro Mariss Jansons, who has died aged 76 after suffering from a long-term heart condition, would feature very near the top. Indeed, in the first decades of this century he was frequently awarded the accolade of greatest living conductor. His tours in those years, to
London and other cities, with his two primary orchestras, the Bavarian Radio Symphony and the Concertgebouw of Amsterdam, were eagerly awaited events and rarely did they disappoint.
Lacerating anguish in Mahler symphonies, blistering climaxes in Strauss tone poems, intense, finely wrought detail in almost any repertoire: these were the characteristics that defined his music-making, which consistently pushed expressive possibilities to their extremes. Even the heart attack he suffered on the podium conducting La Bohème in Oslo in 1996, from which he nearly died, did little to lower the emotional temperature of his interpretations, in which every nerve and sinew seemed to be strained.