" ... Klaus Mäkelä conducts a concert that is more a musical exploration than a complete programme, moving from Pierre Boulez's Initiale (in the year of his centenary) to Debussy, a religious work by Poulenc, and even Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition orchestrated by Ravel. The sheer diversity of these works invites us to examine their connections, in a spirit of witty musical {…}
"Mäkelä is someone who knows exactly what he wants musically, who has a clear concept and who can also communicate it … The uncompromisingness and attention to detail with which he approached the one-and-a-half-hour colossus of a symphony was astonishing."
Hamburger Abendblatt, Elisabeth Richter, 19 December 2024"The wonderfully differentiated and intimately performed Andante {…}
"Mahler that risks nothing is not worth hearing. Mahler that risks everything will almost certainly fall apart in performance and fail to deliver the composer’s insights. So, where is the right level of risk to be found? And does it extend beyond the stage? There is no question that Klaus Mäkelä’s reading of Mahler’s Symphony No.3 with the Cleveland Orchestra on this occasion {…}
"What we have here is a telling snapshot of Shostakovich’s symphonic journey with all its socio-political implications. With the Fourth Symphony we tread the path he might have taken, with the Fifth we glimpse apparent compliance with a nod to the great Tchaikovsky, and the Sixth is flat-out wilful deception. He’d learned to work the Soviet system.
"This has to be the {…}
"La Philharmonie accueillait ce 11 septembre le concert de rentrée de l’Orchestre de Paris devant une salle comble. Depuis ses débuts en 2021, l’effet Klaus Mäkelä, qui entame sa quatrième saison de directeur musical auprès de la phalange symphonique parisienne, n’a cessé de croître et de se multiplier … Dansant et énergique, l'"Allegro con brio" (Beethoven Eroica) {…}
Shostakovich Symphonies 4, 5 & 6 album review – BBC Music Magazine
“What’s especially stunning about Klaus Mäkelä’s journey with the Oslo Philharmonic, who adore him, is the foregrounding of the lyrical. Every time I hear the apparently ramshackle Fourth Symphony, I grasp its symphonic shape better, and how much more so when what you might call the vast first movement’s second subject group tries to sing its way through the sulphurous {…}
