Mariss Jansons rehearses Beethoven’s Eroica

The Latvian conductor, Mariss Jansons, was born while Riga was under military occupation by the Germans who seized it in 1941, a year after its forcible annexation by the . His father was Arvīd Jansons (or Yansons) (1914-1984), the leading Latvian conductor to emerge under the Soviet system after the Baltic nation was retaken by the . in 1945. His mother, the singer Iraida Jansons, who was Jewish, gave birth to him in hiding in Riga, Latvia, after her father and brother were killed in the Riga ghetto. As a child, he first studied violin with his father. In 1946, his father won 2nd prize in a national competition and was chosen by Yevgeny Mravinsky to be his assistant at the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra. When his family joined him in 1956, young Jansons entered the Leningrad Conservatory, where he studied piano and conducting (where he graduated with honors), although his father urged him to continue playing violin. In 1969 he continued his training in Vienna with Hans Swarowsky and Karl