Philadelphia Orchestra bass trombonist and search committee member Blair Bollinger said that it was the young conductor's "energy" and "enthusiasm" that distinguished him.
"It just kept coming back to chemistry," he said. "It's so hard to describe in words."
Off the podium, Nézet-Séguin is fan of Belgian beer, Champagne (Laurent-Perrier demi-sec), Björk, tennis (particularly Rafael Nadal) and Prada.
His repertoire is bound by no particular specialty. On his last visit to Philadelphia, he took the suggestion of Dutoit and led a rare account of Claude Vivier's modern and somewhat wild Orion, with the Franck D Minor Symphony and Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 1.
In 2008 he paired the Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 6 with a Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2 that threatened to bigfoot piano soloist André Watts.
Next season he returns with Haydn's Symphony No. 100 and Mahler 5 in October, and then, in January, the Mozart Requiem and Debussy's Nocturnes.
As a podium presence, Nézet-Séguin's gestures tend to be so expansively physical they belie his stature; he says he is 5-foot-5.
If it is a drawback, he has found a silencing retort.
"Toscanini," he once pointed out, "was short too."
Contact music critic Peter Dobrin at pdobrin@phillynews.com or 215-854-5611. Read his blog at www.philly.com/philly/blogs/artswatch/.
