Articles in Top Story
Amid CSO’s run of Mahlermania, Mäkelä leads side trip to vibrant Dvořák Seventh Symphony
Commentary: It’s Mahler, Mahler everywhere and almost all the time these days at Orchestra Hall as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra gears up for its appearance in an international festival in Amsterdam from May 9-18 that will spotlight five major orchestras performing the complete Mahler symphonies at the venerable Concertgebouw. In midstream of the CSO’s Mahler madness, music director-designate Klaus Mäkelä led a roundly rewarding account of Dvořák’s Seventh Symphony, a performance at once glittering and searching, finely integrated and marvelously freewheeling.
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.
