Klaus Mäkelä | Spirit of Cecilia

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Friday, May 2, 2025.

It had been more than 15 years since I had heard the Chicago Symphony Orchestra live – and nearly 25 since I had heard them on their home ground, Orchestra Hall in Symphony Center. So last year, when the CSO announced that young conducting phenomenon Klaus Mäkelä (referenced in my highlights of 2024 post) had accepted the post of Music Director Designate, I decided that a renewed acquaintance with one of the USA’s top orchestras was long overdue.

Orchestra Hall, dating all the way back to 1904, is a unique venue in and of itself: its wide but thin stage and steeply raked balconies make for a intimate (if not always comfortable) concert experience. Renovations in the 1990s added gallery seats above and behind the stage, as well as a suspended shell to soften and deepen a challenging acoustic. So it wasn’t hard to imagine the musicians feeling like they were in a fishbowl as they clambered atop multilevel risers in front of a full house.

But beyond the typical pre-concert buzz, there was a question in the air. By and large, Mäkelä has made his reputation in post-Romantic and 20th-century music — well-regarded recordings of Sibelius and Stravinsky, Chicago guest shots focused on big pieces by Shostakovich and Mahler. Would his take on the core classical repertoire — works the CSO has performed since its start in the 1890s, conducted by everyone from founding conductor Theodore Thomas to previous Music Director Riccardo Muti — measure up?

That question was answered in a flash, as Mäkelä and CSO Artist in Residence Daniil Trifonov whipped up a fresh, appealing reading of Johannes Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2. None of the overbearing, ponderous sludge that unimaginative historians accuse Brahms of here! Trifonov’s playing was always flowing, supple and strong, with no hints of pounding or cloudy tone; CSO principals Mark Almond (horn) and John Sharp (cello) made the most of their lyrical solo moments with warm tone and deep expressiveness; and the orchestra sounded lithe and limber in the extended opening, energetically playful in Brahms’ scherzo, chastely gorgeous in a delectable Andante, and delightfully bouncy in the closing Allegretto. All the while, Mäkelä was sculpting the overall sound, focusing balances, dynamics and timing for maximum emotional impact. The scattered spontaneous applause after every movement (the grinning conductor and pianist had to restrain themselves before pouncing on the finale) was proof that the music hit home, even before the final ovation and the outsized reaction to Trifonov’s encore (a Chopin prelude lasting less than a minute).

After intermission came a centennial tribute to the CSO’s late Principal Guest Conductor Pierre Boulez (who conducted the orchestra the last time I’d heard them — a dark, lush program of Ravel and Bartok in Ann Arbor, back in 2010). Well executed by brass septet and precisely conducted by Mäkelä, Boulez’s Initiale lived up to its billing — a tart, postmodern appetizer announcing itself pointedly, quickly tying itself into contrapuntal knots, then breaking loose for a final flourish. Complete with a tuba mute (which always makes me smile)!

But it was the last work on the program, Antonin Dvořák’s Symphony No. 7, that really showed what Mäkelä and the CSO can accomplish together. The orchestra’s tone was at its richest, its dynamic range wider and its rhythmic flow freer than in the Brahms. Mäkelä threw himself into the piece with greater animation and more sweeping body language — but also with a greater willingness to let the players take the reins, dropping his beat to focus on accents and phrasing for surprisingly long stretches. The powerful resonance of Dvořák’s opening themes and their punchy development, the breadth of feeling in his Andante, the infectious swing of the Scherzo’s cross-rhythms, and the hard-won, dramatic climax — they were all there in vibrant technicolor, fully formed, overflowing with life and vigor. You could tell that Mäkelä dug leading the CSO, and they obviously dug playing with him. And the audience absolutely loved it, leaping to its feet as Makela acknowledged the symphony’s featured musicians, brought the orchestra up for their bow — and modestly pointed to Dvořák’s score as the applause continued.

When he becomes the CSO’s Music Director in the fall of 2027 (while at the same time taking over Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw Orchestra), Klaus Mäkelä will be 31. Based on last Friday night’s concert, he’s got an amazing head start — both on a lifetime of personal musical growth, and building a potentially astounding rapport with one of the top orchestras in the world. Believe me, I’ll be back to Chicago much sooner next time!

— Rick Krueger

To complement Brad, Tad & Carl’s fine “Best of” selections, herewith a sampler of favorites and notable releases from the year in both classical music and jazz. As often as I drift away from both genres, I return to them on a regular basis — and it happened again to fine effect in 2024! Listening links are included in the album titles.

Highlights in Classical Music

If you followed my series To the True North this past summer, you learned how impressed I was by Canada’s Elora Singers and their annual Festival. The Singers’ latest album In Beauty May I Walk was released in time for this year’s closing festival weekend; a collection of contemporary works drawing inspiration from the theme of revelation, it offers an absorbing balance of breathtaking precision and deeply felt emotion. Eriks Esenvalds “In Paradisum” and “Only in Sleep”, Jonathan Dove’s title piece and Stephanie Martin’s “A Frost Sequence” are highlights, but every composition (whether musing on nature, the search for God or time’s inevitable passage) draws in the listener and cuts to the heart. Never indulging in sentimentality, conductor Mark Vuorinen and the Singers nonetheless lay bare the human condition and affirm life’s inherent value; this is choral singing at its finest, and an official 2024 Favorite. (The Singers’ recent Christmas album Radiant Dawn is well worth hearing this time of year, too.)

This year was the centennial of John Culshaw, who pioneered stereo recordings of opera and classical music as a producer for Decca Records in the decades following World War II. Unbeknownst to me, Decca had already completed new high-definition transfers of two Culshaw classics: the first complete set of Richard Wagner’s marathon operatic cycle The Ring of the Nibelungs (with the Vienna Philharmonic plus a bevy of postwar vocal talent, conducted by a young Georg Solti; consistently considered one of the recording industry’s greatest achievements); and the recorded premiere of Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem (the composer’s shattering anti-war masterwork, this album changed my life) — longtime Favorites which I snapped up new versions of straightaway. Now the actual centenary sees the release of John Culshaw, The Art of the Producer – The Early Years, 1948-1955. The first impression of this 12-disc set, recorded entirely in mono, is how fresh and vivid everything sounds; whether working live or in controlled conditions, Culshaw’s keen ear and finely honed production skills place you in the room with the performers. Wagner operas staged live at Bayreuth, Britten performing at his own Aldeburgh Festival and Samuel Barber conducting his music in the studio stand out, but even an underprepared Brahms German Requiem (with Solti squeezing the best he can out of overmatched forces) has its charms. Beyond sheer documentary value, this set demonstrates how essential Culshaw’s sonic discernment, organizational skills and empathetic rapport with artists was in developing the lifelike recorded sound we take for granted today.

Even as it’s been swallowed up by one multinational conglomerate after another over the decades, Decca has maintained its commitment to both vivid, dynamic sound and talented artists in development. The latest case in point: the youthful Finnish conductor Klaus Mäkelä, who’s quickly made waves in the orchestral world with fully grounded yet remarkably fresh readings of 20th-century classics, from Jean Sibelius’ organically evolving symphonies to Igor Stravinsky’s kaleidoscopic early ballets. At the helm of the Oslo Philharmonic for Symphonies 4, 5 & 6 by quintessential Russian modernist Dmitri Shostakovich, Mäkelä reaches new heights: the 4th’s macabre, Mahlerian grotesquerie (suppressed for a quarter-century due to Soviet disapproval) and the 6th’s journey from ethereal beauty to dry, exhausted humor unfold relentlessly, while a less- pressurized-than-usual 5th revels in cool control that builds to an appropriately tumultuous climax, all captured for maximum impact. Recently headhunted to lead both Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony (where I’ll be seeing him conduct next spring), Mäkelä is a classical superstar in the making, and this double set (definitely on the Favorites list) shows both his already prodigious skills and his rich potential.

Finally, toward year’s end I stumbled across a wonderfully eclectic oratorio, Benedict Sheehan’s Akathist. Setting a lengthly Russian Orthodox prayer that literally thanks God for everything, Sheehan’s musical approach is anything but predictable: chant from both Western and Easter traditions rubs elbows with Baroque polyphony, Romantic impressionism, Gospel and jazz. And yet, the broad, inevitable arch of the piece readily encompasses the multiplicity of text and texture, gathering up protest against the wounds of the world, cameraderie as comfort amidst pain, and overwhelming gratitude for blessings great and small into a moving, integrated whole. The assembled forces of The Choir of Trinity Wall Street, Artefact Ensemble and Novus NY pull off this music with style and panache to spare. Not just a Favorite; if there’s an essential classical recording for 2024, I’d argue this is it.

(Highlights in jazz follow the jump . . .)

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