The Era of Klaus Mäkelä, Conducting Phenom, Begins in Chicago

Some offstage drama spiced up the occasion. The star pianist Yuja Wang, with whom Mäkelä was lately in a romantic relationship, was supposed to hitch for a Bartok concerto, however waited till final week to cancel. She was changed by the cellist Sol Gabetta, her tone wealthy but delicate in Shostakovich’s Concerto No. 1.

The orchestra performed with a transparency that permit the harmonies actually sound within the uneasy stillness of the second motion’s begin, and later there was such unity within the violas that it actually gave the feeling of a single particular person taking part in. Mäkelä guided with beautiful care a second that I hadn’t ever taken a lot discover of, a passing, poignant little bit of pastoral happiness for bassoon, clarinet and flute.

Here and in Shostakovich’s tenth Symphony, the standard of the wind soloists — significantly delicate and eloquent on this typically excellent and highly effective orchestra — stood as one of many main legacies of the 13-year tenure of Riccardo Muti, Mäkelä’s predecessor (and 54 years his senior).

Mäkelä’s interpretive neutrality — that readability and typically cold judiciousness — could be a bonus in Shostakovich, letting the composer’s extremity and ambiguity converse for themselves. (Even the live performance’s non-Shostakovich opener, the Finnish composer Sauli Zinovjev’s “Batteria,” conveyed a Shostakovichian temper of alternately livid and shocked emotional burden.)

In the symphony, the gamers exuded a way of freedom whereas being formed with affected person deliberation. That deliberate high quality in Mäkelä, which has elsewhere ended up boring, right here ratcheted the strain, which constructed inside actions and over the work as an entire. This was by no means harsh or overstated Shostakovich, but it surely accrued actual influence.

Tall and lanky, Mäkelä is a rivetingly — some have mentioned distractingly — energetic presence throughout live shows, coming up and down, typically crouching, typically leaning again slightly, as if browsing. His elbows are typically relaxed aside from enormous downbeats, introduced crashing from effectively above his head, and thwacks of the baton throughout his physique.