The orchestra announced Mr. Nézet-Séguin’s appointment on Sunday, putting in place the final component of its effort to emerge from financial and organizational disarray — problems that have not interfered with its artistic level, critics say.  The appointment ends uncertainty that has lingered since 2006, when the orchestra said its music director at the time, Christoph Eschenbach, would not return after the 2007-8 season. Charles Dutoit has been serving as chief conductor in a sort of caretaker role.  Mr. Nézet-Séguin (pronounced nay-ZAY say-GHEN) was signed to an unusually long, seven-year contract. His title will be music director-designate for the next two seasons, and he will take over formally in fall 2012. He will conduct two weeks next season, five the following season and eight at the start of his formal term.  While hardly a household name among American audiences, Mr. Nézet-Séguin, 35, has been closely watched and much sought after by orchestra and opera executives on the prowl for the next great podium talent. He joins a select crew of relatively young men put at the helm of major American orchestras in recent years: Gustavo Dudamel, 29, at the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Alan Gilbert, 43, at the New York Philharmonic. The Cleveland Orchestra renewed the contract of Franz Welser-Möst, 49, through 2018. In Philadelphia Mr. Nézet-Séguin’s name will be joined to those of Leopold Stokowski and Eugene Ormandy, conducting lions who represented a past era of European-style maestros.  Mr. Nézet-Séguin has been artistic director and principal conductor of the Orchestre Métropolitain in Montreal, his native city, since 2000, and he has stuck with that relatively obscure band despite his rise to international prominence. He is also music director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic in the Netherlands and principal guest conductor of the London Philharmonic. Both those jobs will overlap with his first years in Philadelphia.  Mr. Nézet-Séguin made his European debut in 2004 and is better known there. He began conducting major American orchestras, like the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Boston Symphony Orchestra as well as the Philadelphians, only last season. New York audiences first heard him at the Mostly Mozart Festival last summer. He made his Metropolitan Opera debut in a new production of “Carmen” on New Year’s Eve. As a measure of the high regard in which Mr. Nézet-Séguin is held, the Met assigned another major new production, Verdi’s “Don Carlo,” to him next season and has booked him through 2013-14.  Critics have often noted his fast tempos and a kinetic, expressive presence on the podium. In an interview on Sunday, Mr. Nézet-Séguin took good-natured exception.  “In some other circles I’m know for quite slow tempi,” he said, especially in the works of Bruckner and Brahms. “I’m just trying to be as true as possible to the music and the way I feel.”  “Apparently I make big gestures,” he added. “I’m just unaware of them.”  He declined to elaborate on his plans for the Philadelphia Orchestra. He said that he consciously seeks to cultivate a broad repertory and tries to “draw historic lines” among works on a program. He added that he liked the orchestra’s hall at the Kimmel Center, despite acoustical drawbacks, but that with time he would learn “potential ways of making it sound better.”  The most important aspect of conducting for him, Mr. Nézet-Séguin said, was having a concept of a piece that was “open enough to incorporate the input of the orchestra I’m conducting.”  He said that he was well aware of the orchestra’s problems. “Obviously I’ve had very firm discussions with Allison,” he said, referring to the orchestra’s executive director, Allison Vulgamore, “and with the board.” He said that he was optimistic about the new management team and that the orchestra was in top form musically.  “I think we are about to embark on an upward period,” he added.  He was a boy chorister and went through his early music education at the Conservatoire de Musique et d’Art Dramatique du Québec. He said that he incorporated his mother’s maiden name, Nézet, of Brittany origin, because she was an only child, and he wanted to keep the name going.  He cites Joseph Flummerfelt, the former longtime artistic director of the Westminster Choir College in Princeton, N.J., where Mr. Nézet-Séguin spent two summers.  “I vividly remember everything about his way of breathing with the group and how the hands are in touch with the sound,” he said of Mr. Flummerfelt, citing Carlo Maria Giulini as another, similar influence. “The human voice is what every orchestra instrument is imitating,” Mr. Nézet-Séguin said.  Last year the Philadelphia Orchestra’s chief executive and its board chairman abruptly resigned, creating an unusual leadership vacuum, before they were replaced this year. The orchestra appeared to be floundering, hiring a team of top orchestra-world consultants and then apparently ignoring their recommendations. Around the same time the orchestra had other difficulties. It canceled a prestigious European tour, delayed plans to stream concerts on the Internet and saw an end to its outside recording contract.  Meanwhile, to address severe financial problems that prompted talk of a possible bankruptcy filing, the orchestra’s musicians, like their colleagues elsewhere, made pay and benefit concessions, and the orchestra cut staff members. The deficit this season was expected to be $7.5 million, but the latest accounting is predicting a $1.6 million deficit. The improved picture comes from the orchestra concessions, healthy annual giving and emergency board-member contributions, an orchestra spokeswoman said.
The Philadelphia Orchestra has put its future into the hands of a 35-year-old Canadian barely known in this country two years ago.