Appearing at a parish hall near you?
Yannick Nézet-Séguin will continue to keep the hometown crowd happy with the Orchestre Métropolitain
Here is news that is no news, or maybe the reverse: YNS is still the music director of the Orchestre Métropolitain. He might be Yannicking in Philadelphia, Nézeting in New York and Séguining all over Europe, but in heart and soul YNS remains in Montreal.
Which means the conductor will not only continue to live in his hometown but conduct half of the 10 programs the OM plays in the Maison symphonique and about half of the on-island tour dates presented in collaboration with the Conseil des arts de Montréal. Yes, one of the most acclaimed under-40 conductors in the world at a parish church or CEGEP near you. Something perhaps we should not take for granted.
Maison symphonique programming opens on Oct. 2 with a concert involving a Sherbrooke-based “electrojazz” quintet called Misteur Valaire. I might be indisposed that night. I expect to be feeling better the next day for Mahler’s Tenth Symphony in the dominant Deryck Cooke completion. YNS led the OM through the Adagio of this still-controversial score in 2012. This will be his first attempt at the whole shebang.
Other big symphonies given under the baton of the music director are Sibelius’s Second (in a Scandinavian program) and Vaughan Williams’s Fourth (in an English program). The major choral event is Dvorak’s Stabat Mater. Ending the season on June 21, 2015 is a recital by Mexican tenor Rolando Villazón, with whom Nézet-Séguin has been recording Mozart operas on Deutsche Grammophon.
Principal guest conductor Julien Kuerti is entrusted with Schubert’s Ninth and Schoenberg’s by-no-means-easy symphonic poem Pelleas und Melisande. Other guests are Philadelphia Orchestra associate conductor Cristian Macelaru (Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony), Université de Montréal Prof. Jean-François Rivest (American hits) and London Symphony Orchestra assistant conductor Alexandre Bloch (Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 1).
Cellist Stéphane Tétreault is the soloist-in-residence (Elgar and Tchaikovsky). Other soloists are drawn from the orchestra. Concertmistress Yukari Cousineau tries on the Berg Violin Concerto. Principal trombone Patrice Richer gives us Launy Grøndahl’s 1924 concerto for the instrument.
It should be kept in mind that this represents only a fraction of the OSM season, even if we are careful to include children’s concerts, chamber concerts, benefit events and guest appearances (with Nézet-Séguin) in Ottawa and Toronto. The or- chestra will be in the pit for three Opéra de Montréal productions, and make summer outings to Lanaudière and the Domaine Forget. There will also be Montreal summer concerts, indoors and out. Details in May.
So much for the facts.
Now for some pure speculation, courtesy of Volker Blech in the Berliner Morgenpost. Last week this critic used the occasion of Nézet-Séguin’s guest appearances with the Berlin Philharmonic to discuss the conductor’s chances to succeed Simon Rattle as music director in 2018.
“He would certainly be exactly the right age,” Blech observes, meaning north of 40. Unfortunately, he summons no evidence and quotes no sources before dropping the names of various other “shooting stars”: Gustavo Dudamel, Andris Nelsons, Daniel Harding and Andres Orozco-Estrada.
The notion is not entirely idle: Nézet-Séguin’s contract as music director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic runs through next season. If it is not renewed, the resulting lacuna would leave him with both the time and the moral leeway to accept another directorship in Europe. As for the Philadelphia Orchestra, the last of his five contracted seasons is 2016-17. Bob’s your uncle.
There are problems with this theory. Nézet-Séguin’s work in Philadelphia has been well received. His determination to revive rather than fight against the lush Philadelphia Sound suggests a long-term commitment. Nézet-Séguin is into long term, as his 15 years with OM demonstrate.
It would be odd of Philadelphia not to offer an extension and odder for Nézet-Séguin not to accept. The city of brotherly love is closer to Montreal than Berlin. Montreal is where Nézet-Séguin, his parents and his partner live. They are not likely to move to Germany.
Berlin is a hard job to toggle with another, especially across the pond. Rattle has treated it as full time. Nézet-Séguin not only has Philadelphia and Montreal to think about but a steady relationship with the Metropolitan Opera (another august institution of which he has been touted, with no substantiation, as the next music director).
A further issue is language. Since 2002, Rattle has rehearsed the Berlin Philharmonic in English. The players might well feel it is time to hear the language of Luther from a music director on the podium. If NézetSéguin goes to Berlin, it would be an ESL to ESL relationship.
Still, it is possible to go overboard on skepticism. My oldest friend’s American-born daughter speaks Russian with her Chinese husband. A decade ago, I was convinced that Kent Nagano — with the Deutsches SymphonieOrchester Berlin, the Los Angeles Opera, the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra and a pending engagement at the Bavarian State Opera — could not possibly find time for Montreal.
The National Arts Centre Orchestra under its outgoing music director, Pinchas Zukerman, will tour England and Scotland in October as a centennial commemoration of the alliance of Canada and Britain in the Great War.
Repertoire is either affirmative and celebratory (Beethoven’s Seventh and Ninth symphonies; John Estacio’s Brio: Toccata and Fantasy for Orchestra; Malcolm Forsyth’s A Ballad of Canada) or soft and contemplative (Elgar’s Sospiri; Vaughan Williams’s Fantasy on a Theme of Thomas Tallis). The British works were written in 1910 (Vaughan Williams) and 1914 (Elgar), before the outbreak of hostilities. One inner movement of the Forsyth, a setting of Lt.Col. John McCrae’s In Flanders Fields, will presumably acknowledge the devastation caused by the conflict.
The London concert pairs Forsyth with Beethoven’s Ninth in a joint performance involving the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir. Other concerts (with the Seventh rather than the Ninth) are in Edinburgh, Notthingham, Salisbury and Bristol. The tour is under the official patronage of the Prince of Wales.