Andris Nelsons (4 DVDs)

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This box set documents Andris Nelson's work with two world-class orchestras. After Claudio Abbado's death, he led the Lucerne Festival Orchestra in 2014-15, the "greatest challenge" - as he himself called it - of his career until then. In the recording of his first concert with the orchestra, Nelsons explores the musical landscape of the German Romantic composer Johannes Brahms through his Second Symphony and Second Serenade. A year later, he impresses with a fiery and powerful interpretation of Mahler's Fifth Symphony and excerpts from "Des Knaben Wunderhorn" with Matthias Goerne. For his inaugural concert as the new Gewandhauskapellmeister, Andris Nelsons chose three pieces with great symbolic power: the "Scottish" Symphony by his probably most important predecessor in office, Felix Mendelssohn, Alban Berg's Violin Concerto, played by Baiba Skride, and a commissioned work by the Leipzig-based composer Steffen Schleiermacher. A recording of Dvorák's Ninth Symphony "From the New World" and arias with Kristine Opolais demonstrates the instantly close relationship between the Gewandhaus Orchestra and their chief conductor.