Met Opera’s Next Maestro Energizes His Philadelphians

NEW YORK — As my New York Times colleague Zachary Woolfe has suggested, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the successor to James Levine as music director of the Metropolitan Opera, may have cause to feel anointed: To judge from recent audience reactions, he is seen as the new grand maestro on the block, and quite possibly a savior for the troubled company.

But Nézet-Séguin’s response to audience acclaim for his concert with the Philadelphia Orchestra at Carnegie Hall on Tuesday evening was distinctly unregal; indeed, un-maestro-like. It was hugs all around as Nézet-Séguin, who has been the orchestra’s music director since 2012 and was clearly energized by an hourlong immersion in Rachmaninoff’s Second Symphony, made his way through the ranks, congratulating individual players.

And congratulations were in order. The Philadelphia Orchestra became a sort of spiritual home for Rachmaninoff after he left Russia in 1917, and the ensemble maintained a close relationship with his work during its many years under Leopold Stokowski and Eugene Ormandy. If Nézet-Séguin and the current players can no longer claim primary ownership of Rachmaninoff’s music, evidently no one has told them.

The lush string playing, in particular, summoned memories of the Fabulous Philadelphians of yore. And individual contributions from others — particularly Ricardo Morales, the principal clarinetist, in the big tune of the third movement — enhanced that impression.

Showing total command, Nézet-Séguin led an unhurried account, giving full rein and ample breath to Rachmaninoff’s endlessly expansive lyricism. But he also imparted propulsive energy as needed, in the Allegro molto second movement and especially in the composer’s trademark evocation of cascading bells in the finale.

And that was only half the show. First came the Dutch composer Michel van der Aa’s Violin Concerto, performed by Janine Jansen, the Dutch fiddler for whom he wrote it, in 2014.

Van der Aa has proved a consummate entertainer in chamber operas like “The Book of Disquiet” and “Blank Out,” each filled with brilliant dramatic strokes using multimedia and electronics. The concerto is less overtly theatrical, though hardly less inventive musically.

His instrument in conceiving the piece was as much Jansen, her personality and temperament, as the violin. “If Janine had played the flute,” he has said, “I would have written a flute concerto.”

As in most concertos, van der Aa’s solo writing demands extreme virtuosity, which, of course, the charismatic Jansen dispatches with athletic ease. But the orchestra is less an accompanist or combatant than a full collaborator in a kind of shifting synergy — now taking its cues and motivic material from the soloist, now driving the soloist to greater heights of passionate expression.

In the slow central movement Jansen shared lines seamlessly with individuals, mainly the concertmaster, David Kim, and the principal cellist, Hai-Ye Ni. And the storied orchestra, with its thoroughly modern maestro, was every bit as deft in new music as in the century-old Rachmaninoff.