Mariss Jansons
Mariss Jansons
01 February 2008
MARISS JANSONS IS FOLLOWING IN HIS FATHER’S FOOTSTEPS IN MORE WAYS THAN ONE. JASON VICTOR SERINUS TRACKS HIM DOWN – EVENTUALLY
In case you don't think Mariss Jansons is a busy man, try to pin him down for a phone interview. After three or four postponements - it got to the point where I no longer bothered to write them down - the Latvian-born maestro finally managed to phone from Amsterdam after a concert.
'Ya,' he said, in a thick accent compounded by phone interference. 'I'm working quite hard. Being chief conductor of two orchestras, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (RCO) in Amsterdam and Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in Munich, is of course a big task. And when I also conduct the Vienna Philharmonic and Berlin Philharmonic, and tour with the RCO, there's not much time left for anything else.'
He'd pretend to be an artistic director, draw up programmes and conduct an orchestra made up of needles, pins and buttons
Jansons, 65, hasn't had much time for anything else since he was born. The son of conductor Arvid Jansons and singer Iraida Jansons, who gave birth to him in hiding during the Holocaust because she was Jewish, his earliest memories are of his father conducting opera and ballet at the theatre in Latvia's capital, Riga. At the precocious age of three, he would attend his father's rehearsals, then come home and play conductor. He'd pretend to be an artistic director, draw up programmes and conduct an orchestra made up of needles, pins and buttons. Perhaps this is why he prefaces so many of his comments with 'of course'. For someone whose course was set at such an early age, so much is taken for granted.
In 1956 Jansons entered the Leningrad Conservatory as a conducting student. Between conducting, playing the violin and piano, and tutoring in Russian, there wasn't much time left over for the usual indulgences. After further training in Vienna, he won second prize in Herbert von Karajan's conducting competition. Although Karajan invited him to become his assistant at the Berlin Philharmonic, the Soviet authorities ensured that Jansons would not receive news of the offer. Instead, in the early 1970s, he followed in his father's footsteps and became Mravinsky's assistant in Leningrad. He continued to guest conduct what is now called the St Petersburg Philharmonic until 1999, simultaneously holding a professorship in conducting at the St Petersburg Conservatory until 2000.
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