*****

Nézet-Séguin’s Bruckner, and especially this Bruckner, is hugely—some would say controversially—expansive. His fantastic sense of its inevitability and inexorability requires great courage and patience and above all belief from his LPO players. Listening to the string phrasing in the second subject of the first movement one was struck by how personal and intimate it sounded and more than that how it felt illuminated from within.

Nézet-Séguin’s Bruckner sound is blended, never brass dominated, except in key moments of shock and awe like the mocking laughter of the trombones in the scherzo and the howling dissonance of the slow movement’s ultimate climax. He achieves mystery in pause and stasis and the harmonically unexpected in his conviction to “hurry slowly”. I’ve not heard Bruckner quite like this before.

Edward Seckerson, The Independent, 5 February 2012

Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the much applauded conductor, dared restore passages often cut (including the Walpurgisnacht episode, here mimed rather than danced).  He also managed to enforce unusually broad tempos without compromising sentimental nuances.  He gave his singers steady support and rose gratefully to the gushing climaxes.  The stage may have been cool, but the pit was warm. Martin Bernheimer, Financial Times, 30 November 2011

In some classical music circles, the ultimate put-down is declaring some famous conductor as the world's greatest interpreter of The Pines of Rome—usually implying a shallow personality and huge ego.

Fortunately, Yannick Nézet-Séguin has solid depth credentials, if not from European radio broadcasts of his Mahler Symphony No.9 then from last week's Brahms A German Requiem with the Philadelphia Orchestra. So Friday afternoon's concert at the Kimmel Center was about having some high-tone fun in a mid-to-lightweight program, ending with a Pines of Rome that left the audience pleasantly stunned, not unlike last week's German Requiem.

If there's one consistent characteristic with the orchestra's next music director, it's this: Agree or not with his interpretive ideas, he stands behind them, fully committed. No autopilot. No remembered emotion. When on the podium, he's always glimmering in some sort of magnetically charged present. He delivers a true performance.

David Patrick Stearns, Philadelphia Inquirer, 12 November 2011

One of the evening’s best aspects was the conducting of Yannick Nézet-Séguin. One well remembers the sweep that James Levine brought to the score, but Nézet-Séguin focuses on its orchestral beauty with little if any falloff in fervor. Textures are so arresting and the playing so refined that one was sometimes tempted to direct attention to the orchestra rather than the stage. George Loomis, Musical America, 24 November 2010

Getragen wird der Abend aber auch von Yannick Nézet-Séguin: Der momentan schwer angesagte kanadische Dirigent bietet mit dem sinnenfroh aufspielenden Mozarteum-Orchester Salzburg und dem schlagkräftigen Wiener Staatsopernchor eine tolle Leistung. Hochromantik zum Träumen: duftig, blumig, gewalzert und, wenns sein muss, auch schmissig mit Tschingderassabum. Das Publikum tobt. Otto Paul Burkhardt, Südwest Presse, 12 August 2010