Andris Nelsons in conversation with Gunars Upatnieks (5 min.)

In the spring of 2016, Andris Nelsons conducted a work by Anton Bruckner with the Berliner Phiharmoniker for the first time: his Third Symphony. The first half of the concert included excerpts from Richard Wagner’s Parsifal. In conversation with his fellow Latvian Gunars Upatnieks who has played double bass with the Philharmoniker since 2011, Nelsons talks about his early fascination with the musical language of Wagner, its religiosity, and also about the occasional, playful, “cheeky” episodes in Bruckner’s works, and of the interrelation of life experience and musical interpretation.