Press Service KD Schmid
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Medium: Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger Circulation: 288.042 Date: 22.05.15
“Artistically I am a hybrid”
Portrait: The Conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin appears in Cologne with the Philadelphia Orchestra
By Markus Schwering
“Yes, it is really a dream life and a dream career.” Other people hesitate before calling themselves happy. Yannick Nézet-Séguin is not one of them. Success alone certainly does not make one happy, but it doesn’t do any harm either – especially when it turns out as spectacularly as it has for the 40-year-old.
His breakthrough in Europe came with his widely acclaimed appearance conducting Gounod’s opera Roméo et Juliette at the Salzburg Festival in 2008. Then things started happening quickly. He succeeded Valery Gergiev as music director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic, since 2004 he has guest conducted the leading European orchestras, and his Mozart operas at Baden-Baden are already legendary. Three years ago, the Montreal- born son of two university mathematicians rose to a peak in the international landscape of music director positions – with the Philadelphia Orchestra, one of the illustrious American “Big Five,” with whom he comes to the Cologne Philharmonie on Saturday.
Along with Gustavo Dudamel, Andris Nelsons, Daniel Harding, and Andrés Orozco- Estrada, the man with the difficult name is part of the lineup of highly talented 40-year-olds who will dominate international podiums when the Jansons and Rattle generations have stepped down. In fact, Nézet-Séguin is at least on the longlist of candidates to succeed Rattle at the Berlin Philharmonic. Incidentally, he shares a new, generation-specific style with his colleagues. The wiry French Canadian, who is only 1.62 meters tall, is a bundle of energy who generates a continuous stream of electrical current, but he is friendly, communicative, modest, natural and thus the opposite of the grim, tyrannical conductors of the past.
He has definite conceptual ideas when it comes to transparency and clarity but also knows his limits. “As a conductor, I cannot ignore the personality of an orchestra,” he says during an interview with the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger. “As I see it, my responsibility with the Philadelphia Orchestra is rather to cultivate its unmistakable sound.” And it is “warm, dark, without harshness or aggressiveness.”
I beg your pardon? Anyone who listens to Nézet-Séguin’s recording of the Schumann symphonies with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra on the prestigious Deutsche Grammophon label hears exactly the opposite – sharp, harsh contrasts in quick succession, the rebellion of the middle voices, drama that almost makes Schumann someone to fear. But that is exactly the point: “Different orchestra, different sound. With Press Service KD Schmid
Translation Philadelphia, this agenda would produce very different results with the same clarity. It always develops from the combination of conductor and orchestra.”
Asked about role models, Nézet-Séguin invariably mentions Carlo Maria Giulini. “He was a spiritual conductor who never lectured the orchestra but confined himself to technical details. There was this great respect for the score and the musicians, this simple humanity.” Cologne music lovers will be interested to know that Nézet-Séguin was also a student of Hermann Max, the conductor of the Rheinische Kantorei and former Dormagen Kantor – Nézet-Séguin once took courses with him, at the Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey. He is still enthusiastic about a St. John Passion they prepared together: “It was wonderful, free and precise at the same time.”
In fact, Nézet-Séguin, who studied piano, composition, and conducting at the Quebec conservatory of music in Montreal, has a strong background in the choral and Baroque tradition, as founder of an ensemble specializing in Baroque music. You can still tell that today; in 2010 he performed a series of important Requiem compositions with the Philadelphia Orchestra and, for the first time in 30 years, the St. Matthew Passion in 2013. “Yes, that was a path back to my roots.”
It was obvious that this horizon had to expand. “As a 21st-century conductor, you have to be familiar with every style from Monteverdi to Rihm,” says the French Canadian. “That is the only way you can interpret properly; anyone who only does late Romantic music conducts everything in late Romantic style.”
In his Cologne program, the conductor, who regards himself artistically as a “hybrid” of European and American traditions, sees an opportunity to present the orchestra’s characteristic sound in the best possible light. As far as Rachmaninoff’s Third Symphony is concerned – with which the Philadelphia Orchestra was once described as the best orchestra in the world – the ensemble is its apostle on earth, so to speak. “It will not sound sweet and nostalgic with us, but condensed, clear, and modern – hopefully we will overcome European prejudices with it.”
It will be preceded by Mixed Messages by the young US composer Nico Muhly, whose second European performance will take place in Cologne. “A brilliantly orchestrated work which gives the orchestra an opportunity to display its virtuosity.” Between the two works is Shostakovich’s First Violin Concerto with Lisa Batiashvili as soloist. Nézet-Séguin says, “She is my ‘sister in music.’”
Photo caption: A bundle of energy: Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts the Philadelphia Orchestra.