Jaap van Zweden, the musical director of the New York Philharmonic, announced Wednesday that he would step down at the end of the 2023-24 season, saying the pandemic had made him rethink his life and priorities.
Van Zweden, 60, said in an interview that the pandemic disorder had prompted him to reconsider his relationship with the orchestra, which he has been conducting since 2018, as well as with his family, which few sometimes came to see during the world. days of trotting before the Covid crisis. He said he felt it would be the right time to move on, with the orchestra ready to return to the newly renovated David Geffen Hall next fall, a year and a half earlier than planned.
“It’s not out of frustration, not out of anger, not out of a difficult situation,” he said. “It’s just for freedom.”
His announcement comes as the Philharmonic faces a series of challenges that have only become more complicated as it tries to recover from the pandemic: the orchestra is homeless this season and plays in city venues while its longtime home is under construction and hopes to make a triumphant return to a transformed room next season.
Van Zweden’s tenure has not been without criticism. While he has been praised for maintaining high artistic standards, he has also faced questions about whether he has the star power and creative energy needed to conduct the Philharmonic, one of the best ensembles in the world, at a challenging time. and change.
The pandemic struck just as it was settling in at work. He spent much of the last 18 months in the Netherlands, his home country, while Covid-19 swept New York and the orchestra suffered one of the worst crises in its history.
Van Zweden’s six-year tenure will be the shortest of all the Philharmonic’s musical directors since Pierre Boulez, the French composer and conductor who conducted the orchestra for six seasons in the 1970s. Van Zweden said he planned to leave in 2023, when his initial contract expired. But Deborah Borda, president and chief executive of the Philharmonic, convinced him to add a year to give the orchestra more time to settle back into its lobby and look for a successor.
In an interview, Borda described van Zweden as a “tremendous companion” and said he would work closely with the orchestra’s performers to find a replacement.
“It’s a musician’s flawless sense of time,” he said of van Zweden’s decision. “You just have to respect that.”
Van Zweden, whose name is pronounced Yahp van ZVAY-den, arrived at the Philharmonic Orchestra of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, where he was credited with the reactivation of a set of flags. At one point, he was America’s highest paid conductor and earned more than $ 5 million in a single season.
In New York, he almost immediately faced the concern that he was too focused on the standard repertoire rather than advocating new works. But with Borda as a partner, she tried to highlight the presence of new composers and helped direct Project 19, an ambitious effort to commission works by women on the occasion of the centenary of the 19th Amendment. Last year he directed the premiere of Tania León’s “Stride,” which won the Pulitzer Prize for music.
Critics found themselves praising van Zweden’s adventures, while saying their exuberance could get out of hand in sometimes resounding performances of symphonic standards.
Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times ’top classical music critic, praised van Zweden’s embrace of new music in a 2019 review. van Zweden has surprised me by advocating these initiatives, “he wrote.” It’s in the standard repertoire, which was supposed to be his point of sale, that his record is more mixed. “
Then, in the middle of his second season as music director, the success of the pandemic. The orchestra was forced to cancel more than 100 concerts, including the entire 2020-21 season, and to impose painful budget cuts. He lost more than $ 21 million in revenue.
Van Zweden described the pandemic as a personal turning point. For months, he was isolated from Philharmonic players, staying in touch only through occasional Zoom calls. The cancellation of major concerts and tours prevented him from continuing to develop a relationship with the musicians, he said.
“Building a relationship as a music director with an orchestra is almost like a daily, hourly experience, and in this period of not being with them, you sometimes feel a little helpless that you can’t have that deep connection through music.” , he said. . “Everything was taken away.”
He also felt powerless as he watched the orchestra reduce its administrative staff by 40% to survive.
“You feel like there’s a lot of damage and you can’t do anything,” he said. “A lot of things have happened and there’s a lot of pain.”
Freed from an intense program of performances during the blockade in the Netherlands, van Zweden underwent a transformation. At one point, he hired Covid. He began to focus on his health, losing about 70 pounds. He tried to compose and listened to more popular music, such as Frank Sinatra, Van Halen and Lady Gaga.
He spent more time with his family, including his wife, father, children and grandchildren. He also put new energy into his foundation, which focuses on using music to help families of children with autism.
“It changed me a lot as a person,” he said. “And when you go through a very intense time as a person, your vision changes completely.”
The ban on European travelers to the United States left Van Zweden isolated from the orchestra: he was trapped abroad while the Philharmonic embarked on a series of emerging concerts around the city and was faced with questions about his future.
He finally arrived in New York in March to record programs for the NYPhil + subscription streaming service. But in April, when the Philharmonic returned, after 400 days, for its first indoor concert in front of a live audience, it was absent. He said he did not get on the podium because initially the concert was scheduled by a guest conductor, Esa-Pekka Salonen.
“As long as I had been here, I would have been here,” he said. “Let it be clear.”
He and Borda talked about his desire to leave office during the summer and communicated his decision to her in late August. He told orchestra performers during a rehearsal on Wednesday afternoon before his opening concert on Friday.
Van Zweden said he was unsure of what he would do next, but did not rule out leading another group. His contract with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra is also scheduled to expire in 2024, at which time he says he will also move there.
He said he had no plans to get the maximum job at the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam, which has been looking for a music director since 2018. Van Zweden, who is also a violinist, started this eminent ensemble, which named him concertmaster. when he was 19 years old.
For now, he said, it is focusing on the reopening of Geffen Hall, which is in the midst of a $ 550 million renovation. The Philharmonic accelerated the late renovation of the hall during the pandemic. Meanwhile, the orchestra will perform at other venues this season, including Carnegie Hall and Alice Tully Hall.
“It will probably be one of the highlights of my life to open this room,” he said. If you stay there for the first two seasons of the new room, you will be able to help the acoustics in fine-tuning the space.
Friday will open the new season in Tully with a concert called “From Silence to Celebration.” It will begin with the performance of Anna Clyne’s “Within Her Arms,” a hugging play that Zweden said would have a special echo in the midst of the pandemic.
But he added that he still did not know what it would be like to perform live with the Philharmonic again.
“The experience is there,” he said. “It will be weird, but it will be.”