The Orchester Métropolitain (OM) publishes the program for its 2022-2023 season on Wednesday. No Beethoven, nothing of Mozart, but Elisapie Isaac alongside Ravel at the opening, four conductors, composers and creators from diverse backgrounds. Yannick Nézet-Séguin is fully committed to the new credo of cultural institutions: diversity and inclusion. At the request of the public?
“We need strong gestures to change the situation”, answers Yannick Nézet-Séguin, questioned by The duty on the radicalism of the helm he gives to his programming, but also in terms of creation, with seven new compositions.
“Art is a point of view of a generation, of a part of the population, of a certain age, of a certain geography, of a certain origin. Music more than any other form of art is the place to make room for different points of view. And we can, through music, create a dialogue between these points of view without necessarily making conferences or articles. In music, we can savor the differences and bridge the bridges between these differences. »
On the dosage of things, the musical director insists on the fact that “quality is the absolute priority”, but that “to ‘rebalance’ cultural points of view that have been hidden for decades”, it is necessary to mark the occasion. “One day, there won’t necessarily be half the women on the podium. It’s not a lifetime commitment,” he says. Lina Gonzalez-Granados, Chloé van Soeterstède, Daniela Candillari and Geneviève Leclair will be on the podium next season.
The African-American composer Florence Price has become an emblem of the chef’s crusades: “Maybe my little sales pitch at the concert [lors duquel le chef présentait la 1re Symphonie de Price] was a little too fiery, but I never said Florence Price was better than Dvořák; I will never straighten out history that way. But it’s crazy what we’ve seen recently. The fact of having played it, of having recorded it, of having Deutsche Grammophon which publishes it: all of a sudden, Florence Price becomes a name taught in schools. My goal is achieved. That doesn’t mean you have to play a Florence Price symphony in every orchestra every season until the end of time. But if we don’t do things with a certain amount of excess, nothing will move. »
The recording of Symphonies nbone 1 and 3 by Florence Price by the Philadelphia Orchestra, which he conducted, earned him the prize for Best Orchestral Performance at the last Grammys.
Trust relationship
The conductor thinks he has a certain latitude. “I remember that in 2014, we opened our season with the 10and Symphony by Mahler, and The duty talked about the fact that the room was full and that we were now able to open a season with the 10and of Mahler without having to go through the 9and Symphony by Beethoven. I’m paraphrasing, but you had noted a bond of trust between an audience, the orchestra and its musical director. This bond of trust has always included an aspect of discovery. »
In the journey of the orchestra and its audience, Yannick Nézet-Séguin talks about the introduction of great symphonic works that the OM had not approached before (symphonies by Bruckner and Mahler): “It was my first responsibility , and the people who heard us in the arrondissements several years ago “discovered” this repertoire. Once this phase was over, we went looking for corners of this repertoire, such as the 10and by Mahler. For a few years now, I have wanted us to take this discovery head-on and to discover unknown names or pieces of history which we do not claim to replace those which we already know, but which, in all sorts of ways, are important in the history of music. Germaine Tailleferre, Cécile Chaminade and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor will be these composers next year.
“You ask if there is a danger of alienating a certain audience. The turn is not 360 degrees. If people don’t want to follow our approach, that’s up to them. Discovering the best artists is part of our approach, and this includes creators from diverse backgrounds as well as the big names of the last 300 years, sure values of our concerts. »
United States–Canada
The “representative-diversity-inclusion” programmatic trend is very popular in the United States. Yannick Nézet-Séguin denies that, in his case, his zeal is the result of pressure from the sponsors of the institutions he directs: “At the Metropolitan Opera and in Philadelphia, the gesture does not come about either through pressure from sponsors or through social pressures: it’s a desire to reach out to others and use this ideal platform that is art to change mentalities in society. And I think that only adds to our cultural baggage. »
You ask if there is a danger of alienating a certain audience. The turn is not 360 degrees. If people don’t want to follow our approach, that’s up to them. Discovering the best artists is part of our approach, and this includes creators from diverse backgrounds as well as the big names of the last 300 years, sure values of our concerts.
Is the need so urgent here? “We don’t have exactly the same needs,” admits the chef. “It’s not up to me to play politics or debate words, but we’re stuck with the word ‘systemic’. What I see in this is a small refusal to see received ideas present, sometimes, in life, therefore also in the arts. There is the question of visibility, therefore of Blacks, but above all, for me, there is the question of Aboriginals and First Nations, our own urgency. There have been initiatives for years, at the OSM [Orchestre symphonique de Montréal] obviously, with the OSM in the Far North. But allowing dialogue with First Nations artists is important. OM will associate a creation around Elisapie Isaac with Daphnis and Chloe, by Ravel, at the start of the season. The chef sees them united by “the evocation of nature”.
Among the composers, in addition to Elisapie Isaac and Keiko Devaux, winner of the last Opus awards, OM has not forgotten the great names of Quebec Denis Gougeon and Simon Bertrand. “It’s all a question of dosage. For the moment, the dosage is quite extreme in the other direction”, recognizes the chef. But no question of forgetting its fundamentals.