DECCA PRESENTS KLAUS MÄKELA’S SECOND ALBUM: STRAVINSKY BALLETS RUSSES WITH ORCHESTRE DE PARIS

RELEASE DATE: 24 MARCH – Klaus Mäkelä brings the Orchestre de Paris to the Decca label for a major new album of Stravinsky’s The Firebird and The Rite of Spring. The new release represents Mäkelä’s first recording with his French orchestra, which will be followed by a further Ballet Russes release in 2024 featuring Stravinsky’s Petrushka and Debussy’s Jeux and L’Apres midi d’une faune.

Introducing the project Klaus Mäkelä says “For me, these two works represent a conclusion and a new start. The Firebird is like a last statement of late-romantic orchestral expression with its harmonic language and orchestration stretched beyond imagination, and carrying the narrative of the story with every slightest gesture. The Rite of Spring opens up a completely new world. The colours and sounds he gets out of an orchestra are different from everything heard before. When performing this work one feels the aspect of a ritual very strongly. This is music that has the craziest rhythmic drive imaginable.”

Klaus Mäkelä and the Orchestre de Paris toured both works throughout Japan in 2022 and will return to them for this summer’s Aix-en-Provence festival, in a major new multi-media project. This new release from Decca coincides with the orchestra’s European tour under Mäkelä’s leadership that will take in major concert halls of Amsterdam, Hamburg, Munich and Vienna. 

In 2021 Mäkelä became the first conductor signed to Decca for forty years and only the third since Georg Solti and Riccardo Chailly.

Affiliates

Chief Conductor & Artistic Advisor

   Music Director & Artistic Director

                  Artistic Partner
     Chief Conductor (from 2027/28)