Today the National Arts Centre Orchestra announced that John Storgårds will become its music director, beginning a year from now in the 2026-27 season. Storgårds is Finnish, and his friends back home call him Jontte, YOHN-tay, which is like “Johnny.” Hence my headline.
Storgårds will become the Ottawa-based orchestra’s eighth music director — the term for an orchestra’s main conductor and the person who sets its musical approach — since it was founded in 1969. The orchestra, and attentive members of its audience, already know him well: he’s been the NACO’s principal guest conductor, leading it from the podium at least twice a season, since 2015, and his visits are always memorable.
He’ll succeed the dashing Brit Alexander Shelley, who is about to begin his 11th and final season as NACO music director. Eleven years is a good run in orchestral circles. Only one other conductor has ever led this orchestra’s fortunes for longer.
A search committee designated by the orchestra’s management has been listening to potential replacements for Shelley, both in Ottawa and overseas, since long before Shelley’s eventual departure was announced in May. I volunteered on the search committee that recommended Shelley’s appointment in 2013. I don’t know who was on the committee this time around, and have enjoyed the luxury of guessing what they might be up to.
Shelley is a tough act to follow. He’s a youthful not-quite-46, athletic, eloquent and happy to explain the music to audiences before he starts to conduct it. He’s efficient in rehearsal, way more enthusiastic about contemporary music than some of his predecessors, an effective mentor and educator, and a superb conductor of Beethoven and Schumann. NACO audiences are younger, more diverse, and more enthusiastic now than before he came along. He’ll leave an orchestra that’s able to recruit talented players from abroad because it plays serious music well and because its members mostly get along, a blessing not every orchestra shares.
At 61, Storgårds’ features are more lived-in, and he’s unlikely to match Shelley’s 10K time. His English is solid, mostly, and I’ve never heard him speak French. He fits the old comic definition of a Finnish extrovert as somebody who looks down at your shoes. But he has a sterling international reputation. If Shelley has been unjustly underestimated until now, Storgårds’ career, closer to European capitals, has allowed him to be assayed at something closer to his right value.
Finland generates world-class conductors at a bewildering rate. Storgårds, who started as a violinist and still plays the violin frequently as a soloist and chamber player, was chief conductor of the Helsinki Philharmonic for many years and now leads, among other assignments, the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, based in Manchester. As a guest, he’s conducted most of the world’s important orchestras with a decent sample of the world’s leading soloists. Few conductors have recorded more often. Storgårds is a first-call conductor for recordings of new compositions by Nordic and Baltic composers that even most orchestra fans haven’t heard of — Kalevi Aho, Sebastian Fagerlund, Sunleif Rasmussen — but with the BBC Phil, he’s also been recording big chunks of the standard repertoire. All the Sibelius symphonies. All the Nielsen symphonies. And, still in progress, all the Shostakovich symphonies. He loves to conduct Haydn, whose lowkey humour he gets, and he learned the Sibelius symphonies from scores Sibelius marked in his own hand a century ago.
Reviews of Storgårds’s performances often border on ecstatic. The classical-music site Bachtrack called a June performance by the BBC Phil in Manchester “probably one of this city’s greatest performances in recent years.” The New York Times called his New York Philharmonic début in 2016 “a major success… gripping and profound.” A Finnish reviewer wrote in April, “There was no trace of bureaucraticness! John Storgårds' hands and body were waving like a wild madman: precise indications of what was to come, intensification of the composition, frenzied whipping of the orchestra.”
That last review is perhaps closest to what Ottawa audiences have learned about Storgårds: he comes loaded for bear, and it’s a rare appearance by him that isn’t an event. He’s been known to lead the orchestra with body language and bow gestures as he plays violin parts from the chair usually occupied by the concertmaster, or principal violinist. He sometimes joins musicians from the orchestra for weekend chamber-music concerts at local pubs. More often they leave their instruments behind and just go to the pubs for pizza and beer. But when he leads the orchestra through warhorses of the repertoire that sometimes last nearly an hour — a Beethoven, Sibelius or Shostakovich symphony — he can build an almost breathtaking momentum.
That rare combination — collegial intimacy, big-maestro energy — has helped Storgårds develop a mutual affection and loyalty with the orchestra that should stand them in good stead as he prepares to become NACO’s main conductor. I’ve been a regular at NAC concerts for more than 20 years, I consider both Shelley and Storgårds friends, and I think they’ve picked the right person for the job, twice in a row now.
Here’s the news release from the NAC, with more details. Fans in Ottawa will want to get their hands on tickets to these November concerts, Storgårds’ next appearance with the orchestra, featuring the excellent violinist Augustin Hadelich. It’ll be a party.
With John Storgårds the NAC will remain one of the best in the world. He is great 😊
Loved the Finnish extrovert joke, my new favourite. Previous favourite, from a meme:
How to make small talk with a Finn:
1. Identify a Finn.
2. Smile at a Finn and walk away without speaking.
3. Understand that a Finn enjoyed your time together.