The 28-year-old Finn Klaus Mäkelä is one of the most sought-after conductors of his generation. Since 2020 he is chief conductor of the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, and since 2021 he is music director of the Orchestre de Paris. He is also the current artistic partner of the Concertgebouw Orchestra, and in 2027 he will take up the position of chief conductor with this orchestra, and will also succeed Riccardo Muti as music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
His fourth season in Oslo opened with Thomas Larcher’s Second Symphony and Mahler’s Fourth Symphony. The season includes a total of 17 concerts in the orchestra’s Norwegian home, a tour of Asia and guest performances in Hamburg, Amsterdam, Paris and Vienna. Programme highlights include Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony, Bartók’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle and Brahms’s Double Concerto, in which Mäkelä will also perform the cello part, alongside violinist Daniel Lozakovich. In summer 2024 Mäkelä makes his debut at the Salzburg Festival following residencies with the Oslo Philharmonic at the Edinburgh and Lucerne Festivals.
With the Orchestra de Paris he focuses on music connected to the Ballets Russes, and also conducts world premieres by Unsuk Chin and Anna Thorvaldsdottir, the French premiere of Miroslav Srnka’s Superorganisms and piano works with the pianists Bertrand Chamayou, Yuja Wang, Leif Ove Andsnes, Danill Trifonov, Alexandre Kantorow and Lang Lang.
His programmes with the Concertgebouw Orchestra include Musorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, De Falla’s Nights in the Gardens of Spain, Hawar Tawfiq’s M.C. Escher’s Imagination, symphonies by Beethoven, Mahler and Bruckner and works by Mozart, Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn, Betsy Jolas and Thomas Larcher.
As a guest conductor he appears in 2023/24 with the Cleveland Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Munich Philharmonic. Klaus Mäkelä is a regular guest at the Verbier Festival as a cellist and gives chamber music recitals with members of the orchestras in Oslo, Paris and Amsterdam. As an exclusive recording artist with Decca Classics, he has recorded the complete symphonies of Jean Sibelius with the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra and Stravinsky’s The Firebird and The Rite of Spring with the Orchestre de Paris.
