‘Classical music is for everybody’: Maestro Yannick Nezet-Seguin returns to Montreal for series of concerts

Geneviève Beauchemin sat down with Montreal conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin as he reflects on revitalizing classical music and leading top orchestras worldwide.

MONTREAL - Internationally acclaimed Maestro Yannick Nézet-Séguin says he is truly lucky to have far exceeded his boyhood dream of conducting an orchestra. But as he returns to Montreal to launch a series of concerts in his home province, he adds that he has not fully accomplished his mission of widening the classics’ appeal.

Nézet-Séguin will once again lead a concert at the foot of iconic Mount-Royal with the Orchestre Métropolitain this summer, an event which has become a classic rendez-vous and strikes a chord with Montrealers of all ages.

“Everybody for one night is just coming together from across generations,” he says. “From one-year-olds to 87-year-olds, including a lot of young teenagers.”

“Classical music is for everybody. Even if you don’t know anything about it, it still speaks to your heart,” he says.

In an interview with CTV News in 2000, soon after he was first named to lead the Orchestre Métropolitain, Nézet-Séguin said his mission was to widen the classics’ appeal to people of all ages and all walks of life.

Nézet-Séguin says the mission remains unfinished, adding that opening up the classics also means changes on the stage from which he leads.

“To be welcomed to our music is not only to say, ‘hey you are welcomed to hear Beethoven,’” he says. “It’s also trying to reflect the realities of a wider range of people from society on our stages.”

That he says, includes adding more compositions written by women, while also incorporating the work of Indigenous peoples in Canada. He says that is reflected in the series of concerts he is now launching.

“Every year we start our seasons with some music from Indigenous communities,” he says. “And I think classical music is the place where all of these cultures and influences can speak to each other, sometimes without words.”

Nézet-Séguin has chosen to express his views on equality though music, but says he often reflects on how much to speak out on social inequalities in the U.S.

“It’s an eternal question about the artists and how politically engaged artists should be,” he says. “Once in a while, I think it is important to name realities. And I feel like especially in the United States, maybe because I am Canadian, I felt a bit freer to be able to speak and remind people (social injustice) is still a reality that’s impossible to accept.”

Returning back home

Nézet-Séguin is the music director of both the Metropolitan Opera and the Philadelphia Orchestra.

But despite projects that have taken him around the globe, he has never left Montreal behind. The artistic director and principal conductor has a lifetime contract with the Orchestre Métropolitain, that he committed to “for life” in 2019.

Nézet-Séguin grew up in Montreal at a time where 10-year-old boys dreamed of lacing up their hockey skates for the Montreal Canadiens, but he set his sights on a career conducting orchestras and made his way through the ranks quickly.

At the age of 25, he was named music director of the Orchestre Métropolitain. He has since conquered the globe, winning Grammy awards and conducting orchestras around the world.

“I feel like I have exceeded all the dreams of that little boy,” says Nézet-Séguin. “I am the luckiest person, I have worked hard and I still work hard to make those dreams a reality. But I am very fortunate and privileged to be able to make music and to give beauty to the world.”

He also says that he has set new goals.

“That when we speak again in 26 years, that we feel like there’s a much more diverse and more open world that really embraces symphonic music and classical music than there ever was,” he says. “And I am an optimistic guy, so I am sure we’re going to get there.”

Nézet-Séguin’s next concert in Quebec is at the Domaine Forget de Charlevoix in July. The concert at Mount-Royal Park is on Aug. 5.