Wiener Philharmoniker | Klaus Mäkelä

Klaus Mäkelä Wiener Phil­har­moniker Mahler 6. Sinfonie

Klaus Mäkelä, this season's portrait artist at the Essen Philharmonic, will conduct Mahler's Symphony No. 6 with the Vienna Philharmonic. This symphony premiered in Essen in 1906. The 28-year-old conductor from Helsinki is known for pushing boundaries, as evidenced by his performance of the same symphony at the Musikfest Berlin, which garnered praise from the Süddeutsche Zeitung. A pre-concert talk will feature Mäkelä, Daniel Froschauer, and Michael Bladerer.

Klaus Mäkelä

Orchestre de Paris / Wiener Singverein / Klaus Mäkelä

The Orchestre de Paris and its music director Klaus Mäkelä bring the flair of early 20th century Paris to Hamburg. They explore the tension between Impressionism and Modernism with works by Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel and Igor Stravinsky. Debussy and Ravel are the figureheads of musical Impressionist music – their works are marked by ingenious orchestration and shimmering tone colour. Debussy found inspiration for his »Nocturnes«, in which the Vienna Singverein makes an appearance, in Impressionist painting. Ravel, on the other hand, combined Baroque dances with his own style in »Le tombeau de Couperin«. »Le sacre du printemps» triggered one of the most famous performance scandals in music history. The time was not yet ripe for Stravinsky’s pounding rhythms and sharp sounds, which he used to depict a pagan sacrificial ritual. Today »The Rite of Spring« is one of the most frequently performed works in the orchestral repertoire.

Klaus Mäkelä Dmitri Shostakovich

“It was immediately clear that this first symphony by Shostakovich was the living, individual and striking work of a composer with an original approach,” said Nikolai Malko, who conducted the Leningrad premiere of Shostakovich’ Symphony No. 1.Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) celebrated the 12 May 1926, the day he heard his own symphony in the concert hall, as his second birthday. The symphony was a huge success and soon gained international recognition—the year after, the Berlin Philharmonic played it.One can hear glimpses of sources of inspiration such as Mahler and Stravinsky in the symphony, but it is a new and unmistakable composer’s voice that shines through with strong contrasts, beautiful parts, violent outbursts, humor, grotesque whimsy, and, in all things, sparkling craftsmanship.“I don't myself quite know why the quotations are there, but I could not, could not, not include them,” Shostakovich told his friend Isaak Gliman about the quotes in his Symphony No. 15. The symphony is a cornucopia of references both to the history of music and to the composer’s own work.Shostakovich wrote Symphony No. 15 in the summer of 1971. During the 45 years since his first symphony, the Soviet government had made his life difficult for periods. Towards the end of his life, he often spoke cautiously and ambiguously, even about his own music. Shostakovich has described his first movement as a toy shop with memories from childhood, a protest against death. The third movement is brisk and moody, while the first, second, and fourth movements have a more melancholic and introspective feel, like a wistful farewell to the symphonies.

Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra / Klaus Mäkelä

There are few orchestras that can boast as long a Mahler tradition as the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra from Amsterdam. Even during Gustav Mahler’s lifetime, the orchestra regularly performed his symphonies and helped the composer achieve the fame he enjoys to this day. Klaus Mäkelä, who takes over as the orchestra’s chief conductor in 2027, continues this tradition with a performance of Mahler’s First Symphony. The composer wrote about his work: »It has become so overpowering – it flowed out of me like a mountain stream!« Also on the programme is Arnold Schönberg’s early work »Verklärte Nacht« for string orchestra, based on Richard Dehmel’s poem of the same name. Before Schönberg climbed to the top of the avant-garde and shocked the music world with his twelve-tone music, he wrote deeply Romantic pieces in his younger years, in which he endeavoured to unite the styles of Wagner and Brahms.

Vriendenrepetitie: Klaus Mäkelä conducts Mahler

Only members of Concertvrienden can visit this rehearsal. More information on Concertvrienden.When Gustav Mahler came to Amsterdam to conduct the Dutch premiere of his First Symphony in 1903, a close collaboration started – so began the Concertgebouw Orchestra’s much-vaunted Mahler tradition. Klaus Mäkelä steps into that tradition with respect and self-confidence. He previously gave stunning interpretations of the Sixth and the Third, now it is time for the First, which he calls Mahler's 'pastoral’ symphony: ‘I’ve always been attracted to its imaginative beauty, and its freshness. The expression is extremely clear, and it contains all the elements of his later work.’Klaus Mäkelä opens the concert with Verklärte Nacht by Mahler's contemporary Arnold Schoenberg, who was born 150 years ago in Vienna. The late-romantic work is based on a poem by Richard Dehmel about a woman who confesses to her loved one that she is carrying someone else’s child. The music closely follows the conversation and draws the listener into an intimate emotional journey leading from fear and guilt to pure happiness.

Klaus Mäkelä & Frank Peter Zimmermann

A programme with three works requiring solo singers is certainly something special – so that Frank Peter Zimmermann has brought along two pieces never heard before in the concerts of the BRSO: Bartók’s roughly ten-minute Rhapsody No. 2 for violin and orchestra (1928) and Martinů’s Suite concertante (1944), a four-movement violin concerto in everything but name. Both works thrive on the tension between original eastern European folk melodies, modern sonic garb and the unique individual styles of their respective creators. A folk inflection of a quite different kind depicts the “heavenly joys” that soprano Anna Lucia Richter invokes in the final movement of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony. But the childlike naivety of this idyll openly displays its fractures, and perhaps no Mahler symphony is as enigmatic as his purportedly “simple” Fourth. Standing at the rostrum is the young Finnish conductor Klaus Mäkelä, now in his second appearance with the BRSO following his début of February 2020.

Klaus Mäkelä & Frank Peter Zimmermann

A programme with three works requiring solo singers is certainly something special – so that Frank Peter Zimmermann has brought along two pieces never heard before in the concerts of the BRSO: Bartók’s roughly ten-minute Rhapsody No. 2 for violin and orchestra (1928) and Martinů’s Suite concertante (1944), a four-movement violin concerto in everything but name. Both works thrive on the tension between original eastern European folk melodies, modern sonic garb and the unique individual styles of their respective creators. A folk inflection of a quite different kind depicts the “heavenly joys” that soprano Anna Lucia Richter invokes in the final movement of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony. But the childlike naivety of this idyll openly displays its fractures, and perhaps no Mahler symphony is as enigmatic as his purportedly “simple” Fourth. Standing at the rostrum is the young Finnish conductor Klaus Mäkelä, now in his second appearance with the BRSO following his début of February 2020.

Orchestre de Paris / Klaus Mäkelä

Beethoven's grandeur, simultaneously epic and tragic, sublimated by Mitsuko Uchida's touch on piano, marks this exceptional evening, all the more since preceded by a premiere and followed by Berliozian excess.

Orchestre de Paris / Klaus Mäkelä

Beethoven's grandeur, simultaneously epic and tragic, sublimated by Mitsuko Uchida's touch on piano, marks this exceptional evening, all the more since preceded by a premiere and followed by Berliozian excess.