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Oslo Philharmonic

"Throughout the symphony (Shostakovich Symphony No. 5), Mäkelä has a fierce drive forward with violent climaxes and biting sarcasm. In the slow third movement, which can often stall, it is the lyrical nerve of the strings that drives the music forward."Aftenposten, Aksel Dalmo, 28 May 2023"Mäkelä focused a lot of attention on the Oslo strings and they played with high energy, but {…}
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Stravinsky album review – Gramophone

"In taking these momentous scores back to their Parisian roots Klaus Mäkelä, as expected, engages his keen ears and sense of orchestral drama to hear and to project their startling innovation. This Rite is all about inner parts in high relief and rhythms that are truly physical and always point to a bodily expression. We should be reminded that this is a ballet before it is {…}
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Stravinsky album review – Radio Klassik

" 'Show more, talk less.' That's the Finnish conductor's motto, so to speak, and what he's showing his Orchester de Paris here is incredible. Crisp orchestral energy, and by that I don't mean volume at all, but actually the concentrated, almost concentrated orchestral power, meets lyrical and exquisitely chamber music-like passages and sections. Klaus Mäkelä takes us as listeners on {…}
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Stravinsky album review – Klassekampen

"Stravinsky spoke of musicians as craftsmen who should reproduce the composer's intentions, and his own intentions have a square matter-of-factness about them. Parts where the musicians can excel with superb playing that sucks in the stomach are absent in his music. Regardless of whether we are dealing with his neoclassicism or his primitive style, the music is about balance - and the {…}
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Stravinsky album review – Wiener Zeitung

"How many conductors have recorded Stravinsky's "Sacre du printemps" and  "Firebird" on one disc? It feels like there must be hundreds; Amazon.de spits out about 50 hits for the corresponding search terms. One thing is certain: anyone who wants to add another recording to this list has rather poor chances of causing a sensation with it. And he demonstrates about as little {…}
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Orchestre de Paris on tour

"Klaus Mäkelä conducts a blissful orgy (in Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique) … The Orchestre de Paris plays venomous and lucid as absinthe. Even the March to the Scaffold is thrilling: ping-ponging timpani, staggered rhythms, ambivalent keys, a court-narrative clarinet, shrill laughing piccolo and then the Dies Irae theme in macabre bass tubas and bassoons. The Parisians are in {…}
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