Stressed? Not his temper. He was excited, in his own words. But in a good way: “Like sharing your love in public for the first time.”
At the end of June it was announced that the Concertgebouw Orchestra has chosen 26-year-old Finn Klaus Mäkelä as its new chief conductor. On Friday he conducted his first concert in that role: as a new “artistic partner” or future chief conductor. Mäkelä will be there for five weeks this season and then one more week per season until his twelve-week seasonal chefship really starts in 2027.
The baptism of fire had Mahlers Sixth Symphony as main part: Amsterdam’s core repertoire of which you can easily find performances by predecessors such as Bernard Haitink and Mariss Jansons on Spotify (or in your head). His predecessor, the fired chef Daniele Gatti, also did the same in 2014 with the Sixth his entry – but who remembers all those past performances? With the choice of the young and amiable team player Mäkelä, a new era seems to have dawned.
Historical
The concert, part of the Summer Nights in the Concertgebouw, was sold out, (partly) by an audience other than the regular orchestra. Mäkelä was greeted with a friendly round of applause: let’s hear it first. But after Mahlers Sixth The hall had passed and followed with ecstatic applause the feeling of having witnessed a historic evening.
What characterizes Klaus Mäkelä now that, after a series of corona concerts, we could finally see and hear him at work in front of a full hall and with the full orchestra? Kaija Saariaho’s intense Orion (2002) turned out to be a solid, versatile opening, with Mäkelä as the graceful predecessor on a ferocious route along orchestral eruptions. You immediately realized: Mäkelä’s dancing body language is an essential part of his strength. With a single hint he can make the orchestra spin, a vertical hip thump triggers a striking moment and with a (scarce) stamping foot he manages to give a syncope an extra push.
Exciting
In Mahler’s exciting Sixth Symphony both Mäkelä and the orchestra pulled out all the stops. You felt rich: what an orchestra and what a player – from horn player Katy Woolley with her meltingly beautiful solo to oboist Alexei Ogrintchouk and primarius Liviu Prunaru. You also heard that a full Great Hall is unfamiliar to Mäkelä. Many passages could have been a dimension softer, some moments (certainly in the brass) now sounded very hard and sharp. And yet that was not so much a reflection as an observation – snowed in by a more important breakthrough insight: Mäkelä clicks so well with orchestras, among other things, because you can feel and see that he also derives pleasure from the sound of which he is the center and instigator. If one Mäkelä effect can be predicted now, it is that: the contagious effect of authentic enthusiasm.
Was a Mahler style already discernible? Mäkelä (he also conducted this symphony in Tokyo last month) kept a grip on the structure, for example by serving repeated themes in a contrasting manner. It was a Mahler full of melody and testosterone; fierce and earthy, in the heavenly vistas less ethereal than imaginable – although a Nutcracker-like playfulness also resounded in the opening movement (34). The final part, with its nightmare harps and deathly knocking, was ominous and overwhelming. It already made me look forward to the next concert, with Sibelius Fourth Symphony and Mozarts Requiem in vocal dream occupation. If the signals don’t deceive, Klaus Mäkelä will make great music for ten years.