Pouring His Heart Into It

Some conductors strive for heart-stopping performances. Pittsburgh Symphony music director Mariss Jansons would be quite happy if he never had another one.

Three years ago, he was leading the Oslo Philharmonic, where he also is music director, when he collapsed on stage following a severe heart attack.

At the time, Jansons, now 56, had already been named to a second directorship in Pittsburgh, and it was in Pittsburgh that he later had an electronic heart device known as a defibrillator installed. The device has proved helpful.

But it also gave him another surprise at the podium recently.

“I got a shock at the beginning of this season, three minutes before the end of the concert,” Jansons said by phone this week from his Pittsburgh office. Unlike the previous episode, “I was able to continue; it was not dangerous.

“Many people say I am not taking care of myself, which is true,” he continued in his thick Latvian accent. “I eat the right things, but I work very hard--I don’t save my strength and my emotions. When I’m doing music, I can’t think about anything else.”

Saturday in Costa Mesa, he’ll think only of the Sibelius Symphony No. 1 in E and Berlioz’s “Symphonie fantastique.” Jansons began a West Coast tour with the Pittsburgh Symphony in Seattle on Wednesday; the tour continues today in Los Angeles and wraps up Sunday in Palm Desert and Monday in San Diego.

Slowing down doesn’t appear to be an option for Jansons, whose voice fairly crackles with energy.

Still, he gave up his role last year as the London Philharmonic’s principal guest conductor to make time for Pittsburgh, as well as a steady stream of guest engagements with the world’s great orchestras and at festivals.

That workload has him contemplating vacating yet another of his posts, that of principal conductor of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic under music director Yuri Temirkanov.

While he’s been affiliated with that orchestra since 1973, has a home in St. Petersburg and also serves as the conservatory’s conducting professor, he said he’s almost ready to leave those duties behind.

Jansons was born in Riga, Latvia, the son of Soviet maestro Arvid Jansons, who also led the St. Petersburg orchestra. He graduated with honors from the Leningrad Conservatory and continued studies in Vienna with Hans Swarowsky and in Salzburg with Herbert von Karajan.

In 1971, he won the International Herbert von Karajan Foundation Competition in Berlin, and he’s still winning awards. Four years ago, King Harald V named him Commander with Star of the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit for his musical efforts in Oslo, the highest award the country gives to anyone not of Norwegian descent. Then in 1996, EMI Classics, for whom he has made recordings with, among others, the Vienna Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and Philadelphia Orchestra, named Jansons its artist of the year.

Filling a Post

That Has History

In Pittsburgh, he joins a roster of directors dating back more than a century to Victor Herbert and including Otto Klemperer, Fritz Reiner, William Steinberg, Andre Previn and, most recently, Lorin Maazel.

Asked which conductors he admires most, Jansons cited a typical panoplyWilhelm Furtwangler, Willem Mengelberg, Karajan, Leonard Bernstein, “Toscanini for some repertory, Klemperer for others”--but also said he admires Leopold Stokowski.

“I like Stokowski very much,” Jansons said. “I find him an extremely ‘fantasy-full’ musician . . . The conductor’s goal is content, image and atmosphere. It’s very important that he has imagination, a lot of fantasy.”

Apart from music, Jansons cultivates his sense of fantasy through his love of cinema and Russian theater: “Whenever I am free, I am looking for theater,” he said.

Well, not always: Turns out Jansons also is a huge basketball fan.

“In Latvia, basketball is the same as in America, very much admired,” he explained. “I’ve played basketball since I was 7.” His favorite team is the Utah Jazz.

But when it comes to Pennsylvania classical, the Pittsburgh band’s a slam dunk.

“It’s like driving a wonderful car,” Jansons said. “Maazel created a wonderful orchestra. I can only add my individual feelings and principles. It’s only two years that I’ve been here, but the orchestra is very flexible. They do everything that I ask . . .

“I’m taking care that the brass players are not forcing the sound, and sometimes [we want] a warmer sound from the string players, with more attention to pianissimos,” he said. “All this has nothing to do with comparing with Maazel--he might have asked for the same things.”

If Jansons shied from comparisons with Maazel, he was happy to contrast the Oslo and Pittsburgh ensembles.

“The Oslo orchestra was built by me, it’s my product,” he said. “I’ve only had two years at Pittsburgh. It was built by other conductors and it is a great orchestra . . .

“The Pittsburgh orchestra is quicker, more precise than Oslo. But since in Oslo we have been working together 20 years, they understand immediately what I want.

“Oslo is very young, enthusiastic [and has] extremely high musicality,” Jansons said. “In the last five years, it has become a first-class orchestra. Pittsburgh is one of the greatest in America. I don’t want to sound disrespectful or arrogant, but I think Pittsburgh is on the same level as the Big Five, you know?”

* Music director Mariss Jansons leads the Pittsburgh Symphony in works by Sibelius and Berlioz Saturday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. $20-$60. 8 p.m. Presented by the Philharmonic Society of Orange County. (949) 553-2422.