The Met Opera and Philadelphia Orchestra conductor recently took a break because of exhaustion. Then he found himself in the middle of a performance marathon.
However busy your past two weeks were, Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s were probably busier.
On Feb. 21, he conducted the Philadelphia Orchestra in the conclusion of its Beethoven cycle at Carnegie Hall, and was planning, in the days ahead, to lead the opening of a new production of Verdi’s “Don Carlos” at the Metropolitan Opera, followed soon after by a revival of Puccini’s “Tosca.”
Nothing out of the ordinary for him, as the music director of both institutions. But that Thursday — as the Vienna Philharmonic dropped Valery Gergiev from its three-day stint at Carnegie over his ties to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia — Nézet-Séguin got a call asking if he could step in. He said yes.
“I said the only condition is, I need to tell the orchestra, ‘You won’t be able to rehearse with me a lot, because it’s just not possible,’” Nézet-Séguin recalled in a recent interview.
He wasn’t lying. On the afternoon of Friday, Feb. 25, he was at the Met to lead the final dress rehearsal for “Don Carlos” — which, with intermissions, runs nearly five hours. Then, after a short break, he was able to meet with the Vienna Philharmonic for just 75 minutes to prepare Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto and Second Symphony, which together run longer than 90 minutes.
At 8 p.m., the concert began. The resulting performance would have been a triumph even under normal circumstances. But Nézet-Séguin didn’t have long to celebrate: “Tosca” had to be rehearsed on Saturday, not to mention that night’s Vienna program.
Nézet-Séguin ended up on the podium every day for a weeklong marathon, including an overnight trip to Florida to lead the Vienna Philharmonic in Naples. On Friday, his day off, he taught at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and was back in New York the next day for “Tosca,” then “Don Carlos” on Sunday — his 47th birthday.
It’s a maddening schedule, reminiscent of Nézet-Séguin’s early career of perpetual overbooking and occasional cancellations. Last fall, signs of that lifestyle began to creep back: two contemporary operas at the Met, along with revivals and concerts there before opening night and a Beethoven cycle (part of what has ballooned into a staggering 14 appearances for him at Carnegie Hall this season). Facing exhaustion, he took a three-week break starting in mid-December, withdrawing from a run of Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro” at the Met and two performances in Philadelphia.
“Maybe the fact that my energies were recharged recently meant that I could be up for this,” he said.
During a phone call while en route to New York on Saturday, Nézet-Séguin reflected on that much-needed hiatus, and how he got through his recent grind. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.
What made you want to say yes to Vienna?
My first instinct as a conductor is that I want to help.
I have been making some hard decisions in the past decade, about certain opportunities in Europe with orchestras that I have developed relationships with, like Vienna. But my first responsibility is to the institutions that I am the leader of: It’s the Met, it’s Philadelphia, it’s Orchestre Métropolitain in Montreal.
So I end up having to say no very often. And now here they are, and Carnegie — which has been such a great partner of mine at the Philadelphia Orchestra — needs my help. It didn’t take much time for me to say yes.
How did you use that 75-minute rehearsal?
When I said yes, I knew that if I took a two- or three-hour rehearsal in the morning, the energy needed would be too much. So the orchestra told me what they needed most from me, and we fixed two or three obvious spots in the Rachmaninoff symphony. But this appeals to what a conductor should be doing. You just make things work. The Rachmaninoff thrives on being free and beautiful. Some things need to be clear, but some things just need to be in the moment. I could never be stressed, because if I start to be stressed, then everyone is, and the result is bad for the audience.
Because of the Vienna concerts, you were suddenly holding seven additional works in your head. How did you manage that, on top of “Don Carlos” and “Tosca”?
It takes a lot of discipline, because I have music constantly in my head, but rarely the piece that I’m about to do. When I’m juggling a lot of pieces like this, I have to almost press play on a recording, a mental recording. So the day of the Rachmaninoff, I had to force myself to open up the score to get in the right mode. I had a bit more time on Saturday to recuperate and study, but I purposefully decided to not prepare for Sunday. If you take it one day at a time, it really helps.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to make a habit of these things. Someone from the Met Orchestra asked me, “Have you ever been more busy?” My answer was: I think yes, in my early years as a conductor. I had two different choirs and I was still doing recitals and chamber music, and I was already conducting my Baroque ensemble. I feel like what I’ve been doing this week is rooted in years of experience juggling different repertoire.
Physically and mentally, how did you prepare and unwind?
I needed to study a lot, so I really couldn’t think about rest or anything like that. I usually work out very regularly, and that helps for these moments. But now I could not work out simply because one, I didn’t have time, and two, I thought this was also physically demanding.
The morning I got the call from Carnegie, I was actually working out with my personal trainer from Montreal, a virtual workout, and I told her, “I would like to focus on shoulders and back because I just feel like it’s been a while.” At that point I thought, Oh, I’m just doing the dress rehearsal of “Don Carlos.” Then two hours later I got this call.
Part of my ritual after performances is to go a restaurant or cafe for a quiet meal, whether with my husband, Pierre, or with close friends. In this case, I needed to keep it much more quiet and just go home. Usually my go-to is HGTV; my favorite is “House Hunters” or anything about the Caribbean or island life. But now I tried to unwind with chamomile tea, and with some smooth R&B and a bath. Last night, I realized that I did not watch TV for the past week.
In December, you withdrew from performances in New York and Philadelphia.
I want to stress that what I did was a three-week break that’s kind of a normal three weeks that people take around the holiday. I don’t want to underestimate what it’s like to cancel those, but I want to put it back in perspective. The fall had been especially intense.
The summer, even. You conducted Mahler’s Second Symphony and Verdi’s Requiem at the Met before the season began.
Absolutely. For me, it’s a question of being aware of your limitations. What people don’t see is what it needs to put on a concert or an opera. It’s not just rehearsals and studying. It’s a lot of discussions, emails, meetings, conversations, Zoom calls. That’s part of my job, but it can — especially as we re-emerge from the pandemic — be really taxing.
It really was the mind: I didn’t want to push my mind to the extent that maybe at some point my body would react in the way of becoming sick. Because that’s a big catastrophe, if I have to drop out of several performances the day before. I thought it was better to plan something before that happened. It was really three weeks without even opening a score. It cleared the mind, in the best way.
What did that teach you, then, about planning for the future?
This scramble at the beginning of the season was something that I wanted to do. But I eventually managed, by doing little adjustments here and there in my schedule, to plan the next seasons with a certain percentage of less work, less commitment — and better balance of weeks and days here and there where I can just regroup and breathe. I didn’t need to go into that recent break to know that, and this fall was just this exceptional moment. But in the future, my life will be better.
Are you at least able to do anything for your birthday, since you have “Don Carlos”?
My parents are coming to New York. I’m going to have some kind of family celebration after. I let them organize it; it’s a surprise.
And then you’ll have plenty of time for HGTV.
I promise you, I will.
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