Now in the thick of some of the greatest financial challenges in its history, the Philadelphia Orchestra needs closeness with its community; Nézet-Séguin, 35, has the personality that can make the orchestra seem supremely inviting. Interesting, too, that nobody batted an eye - except maybe an admiring one - when Nézet-Séguin's short, dark, and handsome partner of many years, Pierre Tourville, was introduced in front of City Hall by the mayor in June.
Now, if somebody will get him to stop wearing those gold neck chains . . . .
Other highlights of 2010:
Eric Owens. It was his year. The Philadelphia bass-baritone sang with sonorous command as Alberich in the Metropolitan Opera's new production of Das Rheingold this fall, and was acclaimed by Alex Ross of the New Yorker as giving a landmark interpretation of the role. I think his greater achievement was in the New York Philharmonic's May performances of the surreal Ligeti opera Le Grand Macabre, in which he played the role of Death, singing atonal music as if it were Brahms and projecting his special brand of imperious absurdity.
JACK Quartet. Two concerts here, one in the spring at the Kimmel Center, the other a few weeks ago at Crane Arts, were among the most stimulating new-music concerts of my experience. The earlier had Matthias Pintscher's Study IV for Treatise on the Veil, in which the quartet managed to create a musical arc in a piece with as much silence as sound. The Crane concert featured Helmut Lachenmann's String Quartet No. 2, a piece consisting almost entirely of abstract sounds in a series of tiny movements - revealing the music's own singular sense.
