Mariss Jansons
Great and much-loved conductor who inspired orchestras and in his 50s carried on at the podium despite suffering a heart attack
MARISS JANSONS, who has died aged 76, was a Latvian-born conductor who drew superlatives from audiences and critics wherever he went; he was also rare among members of his profession in being universally well-liked and respected by orchestral musicians.
His career, which in the early years was hindered by the Soviet authorities, was mainly in the concert hall rather than the opera house, while his only significant British positions were guest conductorships with the BBC Welsh Symphony Orchestra and the London Philharmonic.
He was, however, a regular and popular visitor to UK shores with his other bands, the Oslo Philharmonic, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.
The Oslo Philharmonic, which he joined in 1979, was not then a great orchestra but, like Simon Rattle in Birmingham at about the same time, Jansons made it into one. His method was to work with the players, never bullying or lecturing them. “It was a love affair from the first season,” said one player.
He fought to gain higher salaries for the players, won increased state financial aid, secured for them a recording contract with EMI, and took them on tour throughout Europe and the United States.
An element in the almost fanatical devotion to Jansons was that his father, Arvid Jansons, died from a heart attack in 1984 aged 69 while conducting the Hallé Orchestra in Manchester; and like father, so – almost – like son. In 1997 Jansons Jr, then 54, suffered a heart attack in Oslo while conducting a concert performance of Puccini’s La bohème in preparation for making his opera debut in that work with Welsh National Opera.
Seven minutes from the end he felt acute pain in his arm and chest. “I understood immediately that something was very wrong,” he recalled. “My question was, shall I stop or can I conduct? Of course I decided to conduct. I was just thinking I must conduct very, very quietly because if I get emotional I can die. I continued for three or four minutes, then I started to feel dizzy. I remember saying to the leader: ‘I feel terrible’, then I fell down in a faint. The players told me afterwards that my right hand went on conducting.”
He recovered consciousness back-stage and was taken to hospital; the light traffic in Oslo probably saved his life. He recuperated in Switzerland and was away from the rostrum for six months. Thereafter, every concert seemed like a bonus.
Although Jansons championed some contemporary music, he was at his best in the music of Shostakovich, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, Mahler, Strauss and Dvorák. But in Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn and Schubert he found a profundity which, since his narrow escape from death, was continually intensifying.
Unlike many conductors he would listen to several interpretations of a work to test them against his own. Even after his heart attack he admitted finding it difficult to refuse interesting offers. “When you conduct wonderful orchestras, you are still burning with some musical idea,” he said.
Mariss Ivars Georgs Jansons was born in hiding in Riga, then occupied by the Germans, on January 14 1943. His father was conductor of Riga Opera and his mother Iraida, who was Jewish, was principal soprano; her father and brother were murdered by the Nazis. Mariss grew up knowing the town’s street names in Latvian, Russian and German.
Because they could not get babysitters, his parents took him to the opera house every day. “I remember rehearsals for my mother’s Carmen,” he said. “When Don José handcuffed her to take her to prison I shouted: ‘Don’t touch my mother!’ and began to cry. My father took me out of the theatre.”
As a boy he played at being a conductor, wearing a white shirt and black trousers, with a stick, and a pile of books as a rostrum. “I created a complete orchestra on my bed, with buttons and other little things,” he told Ivan Hewett in The Daily Telegraph in 2013. He planned concert seasons for his make-believe orchestra.
His father taught him the violin, which he later studied at Riga’s school for string players.
“I was one of the best three students, but then I became terribly lazy,” he recalled. He had a talent for football and one of Latvia’s leading players, who lived near the family home, urged Mariss’s parents to let him pursue the sport, but they refused. He was 13 when his father was appointed assistant conductor to Yevgeny Mravinsky with the Leningrad Philharmonic, a prestigious promotion.
The lad was, at first, unhappy in Leningrad. “I spoke Russian very badly and anyway it was another country and another mentality altogether,” he said.
An illustrious father was no advantage. “You had to show that you were a success in your own right, so it was harder.”
He began to study conducting at 14 and graduated to working with Nikolai Rabinovich at the Leningrad Conservatory. In 1968 Herbert von Karajan took the Berlin Philharmonic to Leningrad, where the Soviet authorities organised a master class with 12 young conductors.
Karajan chose Jansons and Dmitri Kitayenko as the best and invited them to study with him in Berlin, but the authorities refused to allow them to go.
Three years later Jansons entered Karajan’s conducting competition, winning second prize. Karajan again invited him to West Germany, this time not only to study, but also to work with him and the Berlin Philharmonic. To Karajan’s fury, the authorities again refused.
Meanwhile, Mravinsky gave Jansons the chance to follow in his father’s footsteps as assistant conductor of the Leningrad Philharmonic. Mravinsky taught him how to work hard and unswervingly. “He was not an easy person,” Jansons recalled. “Great, definitely, but quite difficult. He made people so afraid. He didn’t speak much at all, always looking at you, demanding of everybody including himself.”
In 1979 the Norwegian Embassy in Moscow inquired if Jansons could become music director of the Oslo Philharmonic. Initially the Soviet answer was negative, but after an official had agreed to “talk to some people” Jansons received the necessary permission – providing that nothing was put in writing. “We used to say in the Soviet Union, ‘Everything that was not allowed was also allowed’,” the conductor remarked. He stayed with the orchestra until 2000.
Looking back on his days under the Soviet system – the endless queuing for essentials and being followed by minders whenever he stepped outside the country – Jansons merely shrugged with an embarrassed laugh: “It was just how life was,” he told Hewett.
His British debut was in October 1978 on tour with the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra. Four years later he brought the Norwegians on their first visit to this country with a programme that included Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique. He was principal guest conductor of the BBC Welsh Symphony Orchestra from 1985 to 1988 and principal guest conductor of the London Philharmonic from 1992 to 1997, but generally found the rehearsal conditions of British orchestras to be uncongenial.
In 1997, just before his heart attack, Jansons agreed to succeed Lorin Maazel as conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. He took up the post the following year, a defibrillator now fitted in his chest, and soon won the players’ affection. The effect he had exerted on their playing was apparent in 1999 when they gave magnificent performances of the Symphonie fantastique and Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben at the Edinburgh Festival.
Jansons found, however, that jet lag took his toll and after 2004 decided to concentrate his energy on Europe. For the next decade he held the posts in Munich and Amsterdam, travelling extensively with both orchestras in Europe, including in 2013 two Proms with the Germans. In 2006 and 2012 he conducted the New Year’s Day concerts in Vienna.
Sometimes other-worldly, Jansons landed in hot water in 2017 when, on the eve of receiving the Royal Philharmonic Society’s gold medal, he expressed a view on female conductors. “I grew up in a different world, and for me seeing a woman on the podium … well, let’s just say it’s not my cup of tea,” he told Hewett in another Telegraph interview. The inevitable uproar led to a sincere apology.
Jansons enjoyed life’s lighter pleasures – luxurious cars, for example, and (contrary to doctors’ orders) rich Russian puddings. But he told an interviewer in 1999: “I am not doing this for the money. Of course it’s nice, but are you a happier human being because you have three cars? … Actually I am very depressed about degradation of the spirit. Material things matter, technical progress matters, but there is such a loss of spiritual things.”
He was a strong and loyal friend to many. One of them said: “If you make friends with Mariss, you will be friends for the rest of your life.”
Mariss Jansons married Irina (known as Ira) in 1967. They had a daughter, Ilona, who became a pianist at the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg, the city that Jansons latterly made his home. During his time in Oslo their marriage was dissolved and he married secondly a Russian speech therapist also called Irina (née Outchitel).
Mariss Jansons, born January 14 1943, died November 30 2019