Woldemar Nelsson (4 April 1938 in Klintsy[1] – 7 November 2006 in München) was a Russian conductor who was active in West Germany and numerous other countries from 1976 onwards.
From then on, Nelsson worked with numerous great Soviet orchestras and musicians such as David Oistrakh, Mstislav Rostropovich, Leonid Kogan, Gidon Kremer, Natalia Gutman, Eliso Virsaladze and Oleg Kagan, as well as with composers such as Arvo Pärt and Alfred Schnittke.
He has performed with pianists such as Annie Fischer, Krystian Zimerman, Andrej Hoteev and Nelson Freire, and with string soloists such as Nathan Milstein, Henryk Szeryng, Pinchas Zukerman, Salvatore Accardo and Yuri Bashmet.
In sometimes close friendships he worked with composers such as Krzysztof Penderecki or Hans Werner Henze as well as with directors such as Wolfgang Wagner, Harry Kupfer, Götz Friedrich or Pier Luigi Pizzi.
In 1986 Herbert von Karajan brought him to the Salzburg Festival, where Nelsson conducted the world premiere of Krzysztof Penderecki's opera The Black Mask.
[2] He was a co-founder of the International Oleg Kagan Music Festival in Wildbad Kreuth, where he served as artistic director (together with Natalia Gutman) in the beginning, and where he also conducted his last concert, Shostakovich's 14th Symphony, in July 2006.