On the June afternoon in 2013 when Andris Nelsons was introduced as the 15th music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the hope — clearly articulated by his BSO bosses — was that Nelsons would eventually become a Bostonian.
Unlike his predecessor, James Levine, a maestro who always seemed to be busy elsewhere, Nelsons would be focused here, they said. “Boston is his primary location and primary interest,” a board member insisted at the time.
What did that mean? Perhaps the 34-year-old Latvian conductor, who was then married to soprano Kristine Opolais with an 18-month-old daughter, would become a fixture at some of the city’s fine restaurants; or maybe, like conductor Seiji Ozawa, who led the BSO for 29 years, he’d learn to love the Red Sox and become an ambassador for the city and the team when traveling abroad.
Or not.
In the end, Nelsons never did give Boston the kind of bear hug that the BSO’s board of trustees was imagining 13 years ago, and now he’s leaving. Citing a disagreement over “future vision,” the board abruptly announced that it will not renew Nelsons’ contract.
Apart from the broad outlines of his bio — he comes from a musical family in Riga, where he studied trumpet, piano, and voice before picking up the baton — Nelsons is still something of a mystery, at least to anyone who doesn’t work at Symphony Hall. For example, he never bought a house here and rarely, if ever, joined the silk-stocking schmoozers at gala fund-raisers in the city. Nelsons’ marriage to Opolais did not survive his time in Boston; the couple, once considered classical music’s hottest couple, divorced in 2018, and Nelsons remarried the following year, to Alice Heidler.
While there were professional successes during his tenure in Boston — Nelsons was nominated for six Grammy Awards, winning five, as BSO music director — the conductor could be a reluctant interview and was often circumspect when talking about himself. Still, Jim Braude, cohost of GBH’s “Boston Public Radio” show, interviewed Nelsons many times and rejects the notion that Nelsons was aloof.
“Of all the guests we’ve had on, none speaks to the importance of art in painful times better than Andris,” says Braude. “Even with English as his fifth or sixth language, he describes the human condition as beautifully as he conducts — and our audience responds.“
Like Levine, however, Nelsons’ talents were very much in demand and, as a result, the conductor spent considerable time away from Boston working with other orchestras. In addition to the BSO, Nelsons, who came to Boston from the UK, where he was music director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, is under contract with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and guest-conducts the Berliner Philharmoniker and the Vienna Philharmonic.
Perhaps due to his punishing schedule and because conducting requires more than merely gesturing with a baton — some pieces of music are tantamount to 80 minutes of hard cardio — Nelsons resolved last year to get in better shape. He didn’t say how he shed the pounds, but he had developed a keen interest in taekwondo during the pandemic, which ultimately earned him a second-degree black belt in 2024.
“I thought it was a prank call,” Dan Chuang, head instructor at C.W. Taekwondo Boston, said at the time. “But with Andris, he came into the first lesson and he was all out. He’s really serious.”
It’s striking now to read the Globe’s review of Nelsons’ first appearance with the BSO in 2013. Former critic Jeremy Eichler called the performance, in essence, remarkable for its unremarkableness.
“As a whole, the evening made no bold statements,” wrote Eichler. “The orchestra is in strong technical shape but awaits a galvanizing leader to channel its capacities, to bring a meaningful continuity to its seasons, to help it make more noise in its own city and build its profile both nationally and internationally.”
It seems the orchestra will have to wait a while longer.
Mark Shanahan can be reached at mark.shanahan@globe.com.