Limited Deluxe Edition 180g Audiophile Vinyl Pressing

On 8 November 2019, at Carnegie Hall, New York, during a tour with the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks and only a few weeks before his unexpected death, Mariss Jansons conducted his final concert. On the programme was Johannes Brahms’s Fourth Symphony; the latter’s famous Hungarian Dance no.5 was played as an encore. The live recording in Carnegie Hall is the great conductor’s musical legacy.

For the last seventeen years of his life – from 2003 to 2019 – Mariss Jansons was chief conductor of the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks and the Bavarian Radio Chorus. Both ensembles and their conductor appreciated each other deeply on an artistic as well as a human level, and this resulted in numerous unforgettable concerts. Jansons’s unrelenting demands on himself and his musicians, his always respectful treatment of his colleagues, and his great devotion to music all played a lead role in their work together. Mariss Jansons occupies a place of honour in the orchestra’s history, and its players will always revere and cherish his memory.

With the death of Mariss Jansons one year ago, the music world lost one of its greatest artistic personalities. Born the son of conductor Arvῑds Jansons in Riga in 1943, the young Mariss studied at the Leningrad Conservatory before completing his studies with Hans Swarowsky in Vienna and Herbert von Karajan in Salzburg. In 1971 he was a prizewinner at the Karajan Conducting Competition and began his close collaboration with today’s St Petersburg Philharmonic, initially as the assistant of Yevgeny Mravinsky and later as permanent conductor. From 1979 to 2000, Jansons was Music Director of the Oslo Philharmonic; from 1997 to 2004 he conducted the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra; and in the 2003/04 season he became Chief Conductor of the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks and the Bavarian Radio Chorus.