Review: Klaus Mäkelä deepens the CSO relationship with an ebullient ‘Rite’
Music director-designate Klaus Mäkelä’s near sold-out appearance Thursday evening provided another key marker of his deepening relationship with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as he took on “The Rite of Spring” for the first time with the ensemble, and the audience anticipation in Orchestra Hall was palpable.
Like Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony or Mahler’s Second Symphony, Igor Stravinsky’s “Rite” is a fundamental part of the symphonic repertoire, one of those milestone works by which conductors are judged. And Mäkelä impressed again. This was anything but a routine take.
As Mäkelä heightens his involvement with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, attention on him is also heightening as well. A New York Times analysis of the perceived highs and lows of his recent first tour with the ensemble made that clear.
But it’s important, as tempting as it is, not to draw premature conclusions about the 30-year-old Finnish maestro’s suitability for the job since he doesn’t fully take over artistic leadership until September 2027. Mäkelä deserves a chance to build a real relationship with the CSO, and something that can only be done with time. Only then will we see how he will shape the ensemble and, just as important, how the ensemble will shape him.
Sense of freedom
Written as a ballet about pagan spring rituals for Sergei Diaghilev’s famed Ballets Russes, the “Rite” was an extraordinary succès de scandale when it debuted in Paris in 1913 and changed the course of 20th-century music with its colliding polyrhythms and clashing, insistent dissonances.
A successful performance must marry the geometric exactitude necessary to handle all the interlocking, moving parts with a raw, earthy, almost manic quality — essentially control with a sense of almost being out of control, and this one did all that and more.
But along with the almost cacophony of whiplash bursts, rat-a-tat syncopations and hammering chords, Mäkelä made sure there was also a clarity and a kind of intimacy in which nothing was muddled and tiny yet important details could be heard.
Perhaps most impressive were the gloriously gnarly and sharp-edged timbres, the kind of ugly beauty of sound so essential to this work, that Mäkelä managed to inspire from the musicians all across the orchestra, including snarling brass blasts and strident, almost frenetic timpani.
Although the “Rite” was rightly the center of attention Thursday evening, another work might — unexpectedly — have had more to say about the future direction of the CSO: George Gershwin’s “An American in Paris” (1928).
These are still-early stages of trying to get a sense of how the ensemble will evolve under Mäkelä. One early indication is a kind of enhanced freedom that he is allowing the musicians, a quality that was abundantly in evidence here in this famous work evoking the honking car horns and general hurly-burly of Parisian street life.
The Finnish conductor showed an affinity for the idiomatically brash, energetic American flavor of Gershwin’s music. And perhaps more important, he demonstrated a feel for the work’s innate jazziness, bringing an air of spontaneity to the playing, or, put differently, a kind of elasticity of phrasing so associated with the improvisatory world of jazz.
The orchestra sounded like a sly, rollicking jazz band at times, with some bluesy solos from principal trumpeter Esteban Batallán that would have made Wynton Marsalis proud; suave, sassy riffs from assistant principal clarinetist John Bruce Yeh; and fine playing from the three guest saxophonists. (One of the delights of this work is getting to hear that instrument in an orchestral setting.)
Orchestras perform “An American in Paris” frequently, perhaps too frequently. The CSO had programmed it as recently as May 2025. But Mäkelä’s wonderfully exuberant interpretation — with its rhythmic snappiness and, yes, welcome sense of freedom — gave this performance a take-notice, fresh feeling that probably would have stolen the show on another night.
A suitably fun, spirited version of Darius Milhaud’s “Le Boeuf sur le Toit (The Ox on the Roof),” Op. 58 (1919-20) rounded out the program’s three early 20th-century works that were all tied to Paris in some way and dealt with movement on the dance stage or in the streets. Mäkelä and the orchestra imbued it with just the right, light, café-concert flavor.