Articles in Top Story
More than a year out from CSO directorship, Mäkelä has already put his brand on the band
Commentary: The Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Klaus Mäkelä are ahead of the timeline in the runup to his formal investiture as music director in September 2027. In any meaningful sense, the orchestra is now Mäkelä’s, a reality that was on full display in the young Finnish conductor’s consecutive concert programs Feb.19-21 and March 5-6 at Orchestra Hall – and in his Eastern U.S. tour with the band during the interval between weekends on home ground.
Mäkelä brings energy, urgency to Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis in Orchestre de Paris concert
Review: In just under 80 exhilarating minutes, Klaus Mäkelä, music director-designate of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, led Beethoven’s Missa solemnis at the Paris Philharmonie with the Orchestre de Paris and Chœur de l’Orchestre de Paris, revealing once again why the uncompromising work remains the most formidable of choral–orchestral undertakings.
Mäkelä, CSO’s maestro-elect, shows his chops with baton and bow in Oslo orchestra concerts
Report: It was June 6 and I had come to the Konzerthaus in Vienna to hear Klaus Mäkelä both play the cello part and conduct Brahms’ Double Concerto on the Oslo Philharmonic tour fresh from appearances in Amsterdam and Paris. Mäkelä had recently been named music director-designate of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra effective in September 2027 – at the same time he becomes principal conductor of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam. What I heard showed that as much as he is a natural in modern music, Mäkelä also has the DNA of Brahms in his blood, perhaps through being a cellist.
