Breaking: Leipzig names its new music director

He is, as anticipated, Andris Nelsons.

Slipped Disc editorial: This is, whichever way you look at it, bad news for Boston. Nelsons was in line earlier this year to be music director of the Berlin Philharmonic. Had he won that vote, he would have been forced to reduced his Boston Symphony commitment. Much the same now applies to Leipzig.

Face has been saved, and the deal sweetened, by ‘a new cooperative partnership between the two orchestras’ which will mean each taking up residency in the other’s hall for a while. But that attraction will be held together only by the personality of the chief conductor, an element that is not limitless. When it fades, things will come apart.

The fact that the deal was announced in Boston more than an hour before it was confirmed in Leipzig underlines the heavy spin that has been put on the arrangement.

On the plus side, Nelsons is a terrific catch for Leipzig. He’s a brilliant, natural conductor with an insatiable appetite for hard work. He will build on the international kudos that Riccardo Chailly gained for the orchestra and he will probably point it a little more north and eastwards, towards his native Baltic and Russian culture.

Leipzig have done well, Boston much less so.

Further analysis here.