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Last September, he conducted the season-opening production, \u201cDead Man Walking.\u201d<\/a> That would seem like a given for a music director, but he was absent for \u201cMedea<\/a>,\u201d the opener in 2022. \u201cDead Man,\u201d at least, represents N\u00e9zet-S\u00e9guin\u2019s admirable attempt to modernize the Met\u2019s repertoire. But after that show, he conducted just two of the six contemporary works on offer this season. You could say he was focusing on the classics instead, but he led only four of the 18 total operas programmed.<\/p>\n When he does conduct at the Met, he has a penchant for extremes, either colossal or exquisite. At the delicate end, he can be brilliant, with detail-oriented transparency and prayerful serenity. But when he evokes immensity, it is often crude and unbalanced.<\/p>\n The overture to Wagner\u2019s \u201cThe Flying Dutchman\u201d at Carnegie on Friday, for example, had the wild force of a stormy sea, but without any view of what churns under the crashing waves. The enormous string sections overpowered the winds, even when they were meant to have a supporting, textural role. (Big sections, though, can still be balanced; just hear the Cleveland Orchestra and Berlin Philharmonic on the same stage.)<\/p>\n Brahms\u2019s First Symphony, on Tuesday, was similarly elevated, with the impatient tempos of a maestro trying to make a dinner reservation on time. Phrases had little opportunity to land; in the third movement, the orchestra kept up with N\u00e9zet-S\u00e9guin\u2019s baton only by sacrificing articulation and shape. In the finale\u2019s homage to Beethoven\u2019s \u201cOde to Joy,\u201d the score\u2019s direction of \u201ccon brio,\u201d or \u201cwith vigor,\u201d was somehow construed as \u201cwith ever-increasing speed,\u201d as if that were tantamount to grandeur.<\/p>\n The Met Orchestra might as well have been another ensemble earlier that evening, with a sensitively warm account of Jessie Montgomery\u2019s \u201cHymn for Everyone,\u201d<\/a> from 2021. That piece starts with a simple, hummable melody that travels throughout the ensemble, meditatively and communally, with an undercurrent of forward motion. It is as if the tune persists with the passage of time, sometimes harmoniously supported by the flowing momentum and sometimes seemingly threatened by it. The ending is unsettled, fading away with as much beauty as darkness.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n