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Last September, he performed the season-opening manufacturing, “Dead Man Walking.” That would appear like a given for a music director, however he was absent for “Medea,” the opener in 2022. “Dead Man,” no less than, represents Nézet-Séguin’s admirable try and modernize the Met’s repertoire. But after that present, he performed simply two of the six up to date works on provide this season. You may say he was specializing in the classics as an alternative, however he led solely 4 of the 18 whole operas programmed.
When he does conduct on the Met, he has a penchant for extremes, both colossal or beautiful. At the fragile finish, he might be good, with detail-oriented transparency and prayerful serenity. But when he evokes immensity, it’s usually crude and unbalanced.
The overture to Wagner’s “The Flying Dutchman” at Carnegie on Friday, for instance, had the wild pressure of a stormy sea, however with none view of what churns beneath the crashing waves. The huge string sections overpowered the winds, even after they had been meant to have a supporting, textural function. (Big sections, although, can nonetheless be balanced; simply hear the Cleveland Orchestra and Berlin Philharmonic on the identical stage.)
Brahms’s First Symphony, on Tuesday, was equally elevated, with the impatient tempos of a maestro attempting to make a dinner reservation on time. Phrases had little alternative to land; within the third motion, the orchestra stored up with Nézet-Séguin’s baton solely by sacrificing articulation and form. In the finale’s homage to Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy,” the rating’s route of “con brio,” or “with vigor,” was someway construed as “with ever-increasing velocity,” as if that had been tantamount to grandeur.
The Met Orchestra may as nicely have been one other ensemble earlier that night, with a sensitively heat account of Jessie Montgomery’s “Hymn for Everyone,” from 2021. That piece begins with a easy, hummable melody that travels all through the ensemble, meditatively and communally, with an undercurrent of ahead movement. It is as if the tune persists with the passage of time, generally harmoniously supported by the flowing momentum and generally seemingly threatened by it. The ending is unsettled, fading away with as a lot magnificence as darkness.
