John Nelson, the conductor acclaimed for his interpretations – including on Award-winning recordings – of the epic works of Berlioz, as well as other large-scale works by Bach and Beethoven, has died aged 83.

Born in 1941 in Costa Rica to Protestant missionaries, he studied at Juilliard with conductor Jean Morel, receiving the Irving Berlin Conducting Prize, before becoming Music Director of the Greenwich Philharmonia in Connecticut and the New Jersey Pro Arte Chorale, and also joining the conducting staff of the New York Metropolitan Opera. His career took a huge step in 1972, however, with the beginning of a life-long dedication to the music of Berlioz.

As he recalled in a 1992 Gramophone interview, Nelson, aged 28, had found himself not sure where next to turn musically. ‘Matthew Epstein was managing me at Harold Shaw at the time,’ he told Barrymore Laurence Scherer. ‘He said, “John you need to do something to haul yourself out of your choral doldrums – something spicy and interesting that'll make a splash in New York. Why don't you do The Trojans?”.’

Despite Nelson’s later identification with the work, it wasn’t then a work he knew, but hearing Sir Colin Davis’s recent and revelatory Philips recording of it ‘was like being struck by a thunderbolt,’ said Nelson. ‘I decided to go for broke, and get up a performance of my own.’

Nelson and Epstein co-produced the New York premiere of Les Troyens at Carnegie Hall, in the wake of which the New York City Opera and Santa Fe Opera invited him to conduct. The Metropolitan Opera also invited him to assist Rafael Kubelík in preparing the same work for them, but after Kubelík fell ill, Nelson was asked to make his Met debut at a day's notice. ‘So my Berlioz connection was founded on love, but fate has had almost an equal hand in it,’ said Nelson.

By the time his recording of Les Troyens on Erato was named Gramophone’s 2018 Recording of the Year, Nelson had conducted the work more than anyone else over the past 40 years. ‘Nelson is in no great rush,’ wrote Mark Pullinger in Gramophone’s pages of his interpretation, ‘allowing Berlioz’s music time to breathe where necessary, satin strings to the fore, but he gives his players full rein in moments of high drama.’ Those players were the Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg, whilst the hugely impressive cast of soloists included Joyce DiDonato, Marie-Nicole Lemieux and Michael Spyres.

More Berlioz releases followed: La Damnation de Faust (2019), Harold en Italie and Les nuits d’Eté (2021), and Roméo et Juliette (2022), as well as a performance of the composer’s Requiem broadcast from, and recorded live in, London’s St Paul’s Cathedral in 2019. (Earlier Berlioz's recordings for Erato included Béatrice et Bénédict and Benvenuto Cellini while for Sony Classical he recorded Les nuits d'été and various opera arias with the mezzo Susan Graham.)

There were also some praised films released on DVD of Haydn’s Die Schöpfung, of Bach’s St Matthew Passion (‘Nelson gets to the core of the work with his avuncular didacticism and genial control,’ wrote Jonathan Freeman-Attwood, 7/13) and Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis (‘John Nelson understands the paradoxes and contradictions that sit at the heart of this piece’ wrote Rob Cowan, 2/12) – all released on Idéale Audience International / Soli Deo Gloria.

Other posts Nelson held during his career included Music Director of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra from 1976 to 1987, and of the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis 1985 to 1988, becoming Principal Conductor there until 1991. He was also Music Director of the Caramoor Festival in Katonah, New York, from 1983 to 1990, and from 1998 for a decade Music Director of the Ensemble Orchestral de Paris.

His final recording, for which he was again joined by Michael Spyres, was of Handel’s Messiah, a performance, wrote Lindsay Kemp (12/23), moulded ‘with intelligence and flair – just listen to the way he builds towards the “Wonderful, Counsellor” outbursts in “For unto us”, with the cellos at one point contributing joyful spread chords. Or how “and of his Christ” stands out in the “Hallelujah”, and the final ‘amen’ is so carefully unfolded. Nelson gets these kinds of things right time and again, and the whole Passion sequence in Part 2 is managed with great dramatic skill.’