Interview
Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Yefim Bronfman in conversation with Sarah Willis Yannick Nézet-Séguin makes his debut with Berlioz and Prokofiev
It was somewhat of a sensation when in 2010 it was announced that the then just 35-year-old Yannick Nézet-Séguin was to be the music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Shortly afterwards, he made his debut with the Berliner Phillharmoniker. Together with Yefim Bronfman, he performed Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 2. The concert also included Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique with its wide-ranging scenarios, from airy waltzes to garish grotesquerie.
The New York Times wrote: “What makes Mr. Bronfman so successful in music of this sort is that he is the same kind of pianist as Prokofiev was a composer. In other words, he is a virtuoso, with chops that need fear no comparisons, yet his musicality purges that virtuosity of mere brilliance.” With this in mind, Bronfman here performs the Second Piano Concerto with the Philharmoniker: a work which Prokofiev started when he was still a student, but which already contains the full expressive scope of the composer.
Hector Berlioz is also – along with Prokofiev – proof positive that composers can be virtuosos too, not only performing artists. Using vast orchestral forces, he develops a wide range of scenarios in his Symphonie fantastique – from airy waltzes to garish grotesquerie. Just how right Yannick Nézet-Séguin is for this demanding score could be read in the review of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: “Yannick Nézet-Séguin is blessed with a compelling physical intelligence. Beneath the theatrical hysteria of this piece with its abrupt changes of character and gesture, the conductor produces a large-scale unity of movement, with a dramatic pulse and an emotional prevailing mood.”
Berliner Philharmoniker
Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Yefim Bronfman
© 2010 Berlin Phil Media GmbH
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