Mariss Jansons, Chief Conductor of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra since 2004, has announced his departure after the conclusion of the 2014-15 season.
Much loved by the musicians and audiences alike, Maestro Jansons – only the sixth Chief Conductor in the history of the Concertgebouw – is credited with having been a tremendous inspiration to the Orchestra and to have led it in some superb performances.
Having made his debut with the Royal Concertgebouw in 1988, Maestro Jansons became Chief Conductor in 2004, and the Orchestra has enjoyed a particularly successful period under his leadership. CDs and DVDs recorded under Maestro Jansons on the Orchestra’s own label, RCO Live, have received numerous international prizes, and in 2011 Mariss Jansons received the title ‘Conductor of the Year’ from the German magazine Opernwelt for the opera production of Eugene Onegin.
In 2008, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra was voted “the world’s greatest orchestra” by an international panel of music critics, a judgment confirmed by the international press during the recent world tour to celebrate the Orchestra’s Jubilee Year in 2013. Maestro Jansons led the Concertgebouw in most of the concerts during this tour, including the Jubilee Concert and the Anniversary Concert, the orchestra’s first appearances in Russia since 1974 and its first ever appearances in Australia.
Mariss Jansons is acknowledged as one of the finest conductors to have emerged from the former Soviet Union in the last quarter of the 20th century. Born in Riga in 1943, while the city was under German occupation, he was the son of Arvid Jansons, the leading Latvian conductor to emerge under the Soviet system after the Baltic nation was retaken by the USSR in 1945.
Maestro Jansons has conducted some of the world’s finest orchestras and is the recipient of a number of prestigious honours. In 1995, King Harald V of Norway appointed Jansons Commander with Star of the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit for his services to Norway as music director of the Oslo Philharmonic – the highest honour ever given by that country to a person not of Norwegian descent. He was given honorary membership of Britain’s Royal Academy of Music in 1999, and Vienna’s Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in 2001. In November 2013, on the 25th anniversary of his debut with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Mariss Jansons was decorated as a Knight in the Order of the Netherlands Lion.
The management of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra is currently in discussion with Maestro Jansons regarding the date of his last concert as Chief Conductor, as well as the dates of performances in subsequent seasons. The Orchestra, its management and Maestro Jansons himself have stated that they are parting on excellent terms, and with deep mutual respect.
