The Great Conductor Switch!
Tonight was a very exciting performance of Faust. At intermission, as some of us were hanging out in the performer's lounge, Sandy Gavinchuk came to annnounce that Yannick Nezet-Seguin was going to leave the performance to go conduct the TSO... Valery Gergiev's plane was delayed so much that even with the TSO having held the start of their concert at least 20 minutes, there was no way he was going to get there to conduct. They even switched the order of the program - the Stravinsky Concerto for Piano and Winds and the Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra (also Stravinsky) were conducted by Gary Kulesha, but they needed someone to pinch-hit for the scheduled Debussy pieces - La Mer and Prelude a l'apres-midi d'une faune. So off he went, and I'm sure, did a beautiful job.
But what happened to the Faust performance, you might ask? Well, we had the fantastic Steven Philcox step in at intermission. He did brilliantly - he even shaved 8 minutes off the performance time!
But what happened to the Faust performance, you might ask? Well, we had the fantastic Steven Philcox step in at intermission. He did brilliantly - he even shaved 8 minutes off the performance time!