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Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s path to success vienna The Philharmonic’s New Year’s Day concert began after he replaced a banned Russian conductor. New Yorkof Carnegie Hall In 2022, with the help of a pianist traveling around the worldAtlantic after a whole night of practice Berlin Bar hotel.
Just four days before Valery Gergiev led the famous Austrian orchestra on tour at the Carnegie, Nézet-Séguin was walking into the hall to conduct his Philadelphia Orchestra when he noticed a poster for a Vienna performance taped to the wall.
“This looks like Yannick’s program,” he remembers thinking. “The rest is indeed history.”
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 led to the orchestra replacing Gergiev, a supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and pianist Denis Matsuev. For taking over at short notice, Nézet-Séguin was rewarded with hosting Thursday’s Waltz concert, which will be televised around the world to millions of viewers.
Violinist Daniel Froschauer, president of the Vienna Philharmonic, said: “He helped us save this tour, and that’s how we thank him.”
Nézet-Séguin, 50, is music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Metropolitan Opera and the Orchester Metropolitan de Montréal. Three days after he performed Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony at Carnegie, Russia invaded Ukraine.
The Vienna Philharmonic has just arrived in New York, where it will perform three concerts starting on February 25th, followed by two concerts in Florida. Its leadership met in the office of Carnegie artistic director Clive Gillinson and determined that Gergiev and Matsuev would not show up as scheduled.
Gillinson called Nézet-Séguin and got through his voicemail.
“I’m doing virtual workouts online from home with my personal trainer,” Nézet-Séguin said.
After the meeting, he called Gillinson, accepted the invitation, and arrived ahead of the Feb. 28 premiere of Verdi’s original “Don Carlos” at the Metropolitan Opera, having already rehearsed Puccini’s “Tosca” over the weekend.
Nézet-Séguin agreed to retain the original program, starting with Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto and Second Symphony. Carnegie learned from Cho Seong-Jin Cho’s agent that the Korean pianist was available and willing to travel from Germany, only Cho wanted to switch to Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto, which he had recently performed. But the orchestra did not have these parts during the tour, so it insisted on using Rachmaninov’s works, which Cao last performed in 2019.
Late night at hotel bar
Cho’s apartment building in Berlin’s Mitte district had a rule that prohibited him from playing at night. Cho’s Deutsche Grammophon staff arranged for him to play piano at the BPM Bar in the nhow hotel. He arrived there late at night after being tested for coronavirus and needed to catch a 7 a.m. flight.
“People are still there. They’re drinking, and I’m practicing Rach 2,” Cho said. “When I need to take a break and relax, every time I stop playing, they clap because they think I’m performing.”
Cao sat in front of the piano until 4 a.m., then flew to Frankfurt, then to New York’s JFK International Airport, landing at 2 p.m. Arrive at the Thompson Central Park Hotel in New York an hour later and head to nearby Carnegie for rehearsals. However, Nézet-Séguin was at the Metropolitan Opera in the final rehearsals of Don Carlos. When the conductor arrived at Carnegie, he only had about 10 minutes to work together.
“Very pale,” Nézet-Séguin recalled. “I could tell he wasn’t sleeping.”
The evening’s concert was a success along with the Saturday and Sunday programs.
“It changed his life and it changed our relationship,” Froschauer said.
Zhao did not play any of the score in his Vienna Philharmonic debut. When he returned to the hotel from the intense stress, both nostrils were bleeding.
After the premiere of Don Carlos, Nézet-Séguin and Cho repeated the opening show on March 1 in Naples, Florida. About 10 days later, Nézet-Séguin was diagnosed with coronavirus and missed the March 26 broadcast of “Don Carlos” around the world.
“I don’t blame that part alone for me getting COVID, but it certainly played a role,” Nézet-Séguin said of the jam-packed schedule that contributed to his exhaustion. “But I don’t regret that my relationship with the Vienna Philharmonic turned out this way.”
The relationship is not close to begin with
Nézet-Séguin made his debut with the Vienna Philharmonic in 2010, but until that weekend in New York, they had not worked together for five years. The orchestra subsequently invited him to take part in a summer night concert outside Schönbrunn Palace in June 2023, and embarked on a California tour in March this year, followed by a week of concerts in Vienna and a high-profile event at the Palais Garnier in Paris.
“Yannick is very focused on North America…He’s not as well known in Europe,” said double bassist Michael Bladerer, the band’s general manager. “We also know that we have a lot of older conductors and we need some younger conductors in the future.”
Nézet-Séguin’s illustrious predecessors leading the New Year’s Concert include Herbert van Karajan, Carlos Kleber, Claudio Abbado, Riccardo Muti and Daniel Barenboim.
After Muti programmed Constanze Geiger as the first work by a female composer at the 2025 Vienna New Year’s Concert, Nézet-Séguin chose works by Josefine Weinlich and Florence Price to mix into the Strauss family’s 2026 production.
Nézet-Séguin will conduct in a custom Louis Vuitton suit.
“I still pinch myself,” he said. “I think every young conductor dreams of conducting this at some point, but it seems so far out of reach because you can’t really apply for a gig like this – pardon the expression.”