Emerging from the ruins of a Classical music industry broken by recession, COVID and post millennial gimmickry, is a phenomenal new artist who within the space of only five years has become the greatest conductor of the 21st century. His name is Klaus Mäkelä.
Aged only 29, Mäkelä as both man and musician embodies the rich, magical and mysterious culture of his native Finland. Standing well over six feet tall, with a slim powerful build, long legs, clean shaven with high cheekbones, pale blue long-lashed eyes and a sharp, arresting profile, Mäkelä, with his thick, dark gold slicked-back hair, could be the human incarnation of a magnificent bird of prey.
He carries with him his own personal force field: a radiant, fascinating natural charisma of immense charm and dignity along with a great inner strength and deep sensitivity. He is someone you are immediately drawn to, fascinated and ultimately enthralled by. Even if you knew nothing about him, Mäkelä is one of these rare beings who quite literally, draws you in and stands out from the crowd.
Then there are the clothes. Stylish, expensive casual and formal attire more in keeping with fashions from the early 1960s. Double-breasted blazers, open-necked striped shirts and polished pointed shoes that vintage movie stars like Cary Grant or Ray Milland would wear. It’s as if Mäkelä had somehow been born 100 years ago, cryogenically frozen 60 years ago and restored to life five years ago. He is in so many ways a throwback to the mid-20th century – a time when great conductors walked the Earth …
For that is what makes Mäkelä the musician special – he possesses the deep technical, practical and aesthetic knowledge and experience that made the great conductors of the last century so remarkable. Born into a highly musical and deeply cultivated family – Mäkelä’s father is a cellist, his mother a pianist, his grandfather a viola player, his sister a ballet dancer – he showed a precocious interest in music at a very early age – especially conducting when as 12-year old chorister in the Finnish National Opera, he sang in a production of ‘Carmen’.
His training began early. While studying the cello, the 14-year old Mäkelä was admitted to the conducting class of legendary pedagogue Jorma Panula at the Sibelius Academy. Spotting the boy’s natural talent immediately, Panula actively encouraged Mäkelä, who as cellist became a soloist with a number of Finnish ensembles including the Lahti Symphony Orchestra and appeared at several Finnish music festivals.
His professional conducting breakthrough came when in 2017, aged 21, Mäkelä was invited to conduct the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, making such a powerful impression that he was appointed their Principal Guest Conductor with a three-year contract. Only a year later, he was offered an appearance with the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra and on the basis of that one concert, was appointed their Chief Conductor for the 2020-21 season with the contract automatically extended to 2027 before his first season even began.
Meanwhile, Paris came calling. The notoriously undisciplined Orchestre de Paris invited Mäkelä for a guest appearance in 2019. The young Maestro, fully aware of the dragons den that awaited him, bravely accepted the challenge and immediately won over the infamous players, with the result that they too offered him the post of Music Director on the spot. Mäkelä accepted, and as with Oslo, was awarded extended contracts until 2027.
Alongside these events came a recording contract from Decca, which made Mäkelä the label’s first conductorial signing in 40 years and, following Sir Georg Solti and Riccardo Chailly, only the third conductor in the label’s history to have an exclusive contract. An award-winning Sibelius symphony cycle with the Oslo Philharmonic promptly appeared, along assorted Franco-Russian repertoire from the Orchestre de Paris. A Shostakovich symphony cycle is also under way with the Oslo orchestra and a recent disc of the Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique has just been released from Paris.
This list of career achievements, incredible for one so young, has already been surpassed by the almost simultaneous announcements in 2022 of Mäkelä’s appointments as Artistic Partner and subsequent Chief Conductor of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Amsterdam, and new Music Director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
After all this, it was only a matter of time before the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra called. It did and Mäkelä’s debut with them also led to instant return concerts with them both in Berlin and at major music festivals around Germany. Meanwhile, biding their time with characteristic Austrian cunning, the Vienna Philharmonic finally showed their hand, initially inviting Mäkelä and his orchestras of Amsterdam, Paris and Oslo to perform in the historic golden hall of the Musikverein before awarding the ultimate honour of permitting Mäkelä to make his historic debut with the Philharmoniker itself last year with a series of performances of Maher’s 6th symphony.
In the meantime, invitations to the festivals of Baden-Baden, Edinburgh, Granada, Lucerne and Salzburg came in rapid succession along with guest conducting spots with the Leipzig Gewandhaus, London Philharmonic, London Symphony and Munich Philharmonic orchestras to name but a few. Only orchestras in Finland are conspicuous by their absence.
None, absolutely none of the above would have been remotely possible without the natural, phenomenal talent that Mäkelä so obviously possesses. Despite his relative youth, he is no flash in the pan, seven-day-wonder. He spends months studying, preparing and honing his scores prior to rehearsal and performance. When he comes before any of these great orchestras, he already knows what he wants and how to get it. His rehearsals are quick, efficient and friendly, creating both a pleasant and exciting working atmosphere.
Mäkelä’s conducting style, while highly physical and exuberant, is never self-regarding. Somehow fusing the natural flamboyance of Bernstein with the hypnotic subtlety of Karajan, replete with a stick technique that is both clear and dynamic, he is a very easy and pleasing conductor to read and follow. When he makes a gesture or series of gestures to the orchestra, you immediately hear them in the sound of the playing. A rare gift, when so many maestri, doubtless enthralled to the ghost of Carlos Kleiber, produce nothing on the podium that bears any relation to the actual music – much less the school of Marin Alsop conducting, which is more interested in fashionable social-trend preaching than actual music making.
Mäkelä is essentially a highly disciplined musician and has little time or patience for so-called ‘hype’. With his looks and charisma, he could easily forge a lucrative side-line in advertising or chat show appearances. But off the podium, he is a very shy, almost bashful personality at times, with a self-effacing aspect that seems uneasy with personal praise. Perhaps it’s as well he’s signed to Decca, a label which, for all its undoubted technical quality, is perhaps the one least able to blow its own trumpet (“they simply do not know how to sell!” Solti often shouted about them in frequent exasperation of their poor marketing ability).
However, there is one fly in the ointment in the ongoing career of this almost superhuman maestro, not so much the potential annoyances of over-hype but the clear and present danger of burnout.
Fully committed to not one but four major international orchestras, many feel that Mäkelä is spreading himself too thinly. As well as the hard graft of musical preparation and rehearsal, the music directorship of an orchestra involves planning, programming, recording and the physical and mental challenges of frequent long-distance travelling for international tours – not to mention the demands of actual public performance. All this would be a tall order for one orchestra, but four?
Additionally, because he so outstanding in what he does – and has been so from the beginning – Mäkelä has set the bar daringly high. He himself admitted in a recent magazine interview that “I know I have to be good” every time. Committed to quality, and producing unforgettable performance after unforgettable performance, Mäkelä delivers every time. Mediocre, run-of-the-mill concerts are not part of his musical makeup and he – like the very greatest of artists – is highly self-critical. In essence, whatever musical demands he makes on the orchestra, he also makes on himself in the name of the Muse. A dangerous double-edged game.
However, Mäkelä is a very practical, balanced individual. He has interests beyond music. Something of a Renaissance man, he loves photography and takes beautifully composed black & white images with the vintage equipment he likes to collect while on his travels. He speaks at least four languages and loves the history of Art, regularly visiting the great galleries and museums whenever he’s conducting in a major city somewhere. And, like all Finns, he is deeply close to Nature, using the therapy of forest and lakeside walks to calm himself and gather his thoughts for the next great task ahead.
Yes, Klaus Mäkelä is very special. I’ve met him several times and feel I know him well. Ignore the spiteful jibes of jealous, zealous critics; Mäkelä is the is the saviour of Classical music and is already taking it into a brave new golden age which I for one hope to live long enough to enjoy.
Robert Kenchington
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