The basic setup in the YAML is done according to the 'Includes' section here. Then an attempt to create a document which mixes portrait and landscape layout.
Rmd in RStudio (press Knit PDF button) results in a pdf with all pages in landscape layout:. If there is a pure rmarkdown option that would be even better than using latex. I wonder how to use rmarkdown to generate a pdf which has both portrait and landscape layout in the same document.