Latvia native Andris Nelsons is clearly one of the great young conductors of the 21st century, concurrently serving as the music director of two acclaimed institutions: the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Germany’s Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. The former student of Mariss Jansons also maintains ties to the Vienna Philharmonic and the Berlin Philharmonic. Nelson's repertoire, both orchestral and operatic, is broad, including contemporary composers like Hans Abrahamsen; his command of European classics is mahogany in its richness, with almost three-dimensional depth. He’s been duly celebrated for his magnificent renderings of the Shostakovich symphonies with the BSO.