The prestigious Canadian conductor Yannick Nézet-Seguin (Montreal, 45 years old), conductor of the Montreal Metropolitan Orchestra, the New York Metropolitan Opera, the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Rotterdam Philharmonic, is also passionate about tennis and made a subtle and original musical comparison between two of the greatest in history, Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal, in an interview published by L'Equipe.
Nezet-Seguin revealed that most of his colleagues prefer the Swiss: “I notice that very often my musician friends love Federer, its elegance, its fluidity, its refinement. I get it, because it represents this ideal of transcended work, when everything becomes so natural that it seems like it's always easy. ”
The musician elaborated on this consideration: “Here we play a very musical value: relaxation, absence of tension for a good sound.” But he declared himself a total fan of Nadal and explained why he opted for Spanish: “But what I like most about music is passion and that is why I tend to identify with Nadal … His way of fighting for absolutely every point resonates with my consideration that absolutely every note is important. When we listen to a musical piece, what comes to us is not just that everything is beautiful and pretty, these are the great moments of emotion, those where passions are unleashed, before giving way to calm. In the end, you have to have tracked something with ups and downs that together tell a story. All of that resembles Nadal and his famous art of winning a match. Almost unhealthily, or certainly unconsciously, he often put himself in a losing position before winning, especially early in his career. As a musician, I find this story of the human being who controls his destiny very inspiring. Nadal is very Beethoven, actually. “