In Sunday’s (8/1) Los Angeles Times, Marcia Adair reports from Montreal, where she recently visited with Yannick Nézet-Séguin. “In this city he is known simply as Yannick, while American journalists seem to be plumping for YNS. Whatever the appellation, last month’s announcement that 35-year-old Quebecker Yannick Nézet-Séguin would be the eighth music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra was kind of a big deal…. His appointment is part of a new wave of younger conductors securing posts at major orchestras, the most fêted of whom is, of course, the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s 29-year-old music director, Gustavo Dudamel, but Seattle’s recently appointed Ludovic Morlot, 36, and Alan Gilbert, 43, round out the team nicely…. Because he has conducted rarely in America, it may seem as if Nézet-Séguin has appeared out of nowhere. The truth is that his star has been rising steadily for nearly 20 years…. Compared to the mania that swept the globe in the 18 months leading to Dudamel’s first day as music director, the YNS hype is barely a burble.… For a start, no one has suggested that Nézet-Séguin will single-handedly save classical music. This is no bad thing.”
Posted August 2, 2010
Photo of Yannick Nézet-Séguin by Marco Borggreve
