The Orchester Métropolitain announces a real “musical deconfinement” for its 42and season announced on Wednesday. We spoke with Yannick Nézet-Séguin about the menu that his Montreal phalanx has in store for us for 2022-2023.
Posted at 10:00 a.m.
Does an orchestra have to constantly reinvent itself? And if so, how? At a time when musical organizations are struggling to fill halls, in particular because of a certain pandemic reluctance, how to attract customers without losing their soul?
“For the programming, the basic principle has not changed,” says the life conductor of the Orchester Métropolitain (OM). I choose music that excites me. These are personal choices, but they revolve around OM’s mission, which hasn’t changed for decades, to share the love for music while introducing our audience to new works. . »
These principles have not changed, but our way of understanding them in recent years has been to bring together the so-called traditional repertoire with the repertoire that comes off the beaten track, by people who have been neglected and who can bring a point of view of certain parts of society, be it women, minorities, different cultural communities, etc.
Yannick Nezet-Seguin
“These works must be able to dialogue with the great works that we have been playing for decades, which are more of a European, white and masculine tradition. »
Violin Concerto by Tchaikovsky with Kerson Leong, Piano Concerto No. 3 by Prokofiev with David Jalbert, Aranjuez Concerto by Joaquín Rodrigo with guitarist Miloš (who was originally scheduled to play last February), Symphony No. 5 by Shostakovich, Mass in B by Bach… Milestones in the repertoire will not be lacking next year.
But the public will also be invited to step out of their comfort zone with a contemporary flute concerto by the soloist in residence Emmanuel Pahud, a bouquet of more or less rare works for Latin flights November 4 and the too little heard Seventh Symphony by Dvorak.
Watchword: diversity
“The way of discovering music has changed. When our audience came to the concert 25 years ago, they often heard Schubert, Beethoven, a bit of Brahms, a bit of Tchaikovsky, but when I arrived there had hardly ever been a Sibelius symphony , neither of Mahler, nor of Bruckner, nor the fantastic symphony [de Berlioz]nor the great works of Debussy and Ravel”, recalls Yannick Nézet-Séguin, who has since contributed greatly to putting these pages on the agenda of the whole.
PHOTO DAVID BOILY, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Elisapie Isaac will present a creation during the 2022-2023 season of the Orchester Métropolitain.
Continuing in this vein, the chef himself will lead the Symphony No. 3 of the African-American composer Florence Price, of whom he had given the Symphony No. 1 last autumn, but also the ballad for orchestra of the Afro-British Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, the flute concerto by Cécile Chaminade, the Symphony No. 1 by Louise Farrenc and a creation by Inuit Elisapie Isaac. In Quebec music: creations by Denis Gougeon, Keiko Devaux and Simon Bertrand (a theremin concerto!).
As for the performers, we notice a slightly more sustained presence of the titular conductor, who will be present for six concerts.
While the year 2021-2022 only made way for the usual collaborator Nicolas Ellis on the side of the male guest conductors, the next version will also feature the conductor of the National Arts Center Orchestra, Alexander Shelley, and Australian Nicholas Carter.
The guest conductors – the Colombian Lina González-Granados, the French Chloé van Soeterstède and the Serbian Daniela Candillari – will be reduced from five to three for the seasonal concerts.
“We are not aiming for a quota, that was never the goal, says Yannick Nézet-Séguin. The goal for several years has been to shake up habits a little by giving space to talented women chefs who come from here and elsewhere and thus correct the disproportion of men on the podium. That doesn’t mean we should stop inviting men. But it is true that a certain natural parity could be something desirable. »