"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 {…}
"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 {…}
"Mäkelä offers us a phenomenal demonstration of absolute rigour and infinite poetic freedom. He approaches the work (Berlioz' Symphonie Fantastique) as he would a new work, not bothering with any tradition or convention, and thus makes us literally rediscover a revolutionary score … He constructs a narrative that will keep us on the edge of our seats until the end of the final {…}
“ … Mäkelä wants to bring out all the strange musical details in the piece (Berlioz’ Symphonie Fantastique). Counter voices and rhythmic gestures come, and there is something almost alienating about it. "Symphonie fantastique" can often be experienced as routine, but not this performance … The orchestra plays with a roughness at the edges that gives extra life, while the {…}
"Mäkelä, who is all about the music ... played up the excitement Mahler built into the music without adding anything spurious or showy for its own sake. Seldom has one heard a reading of this central work in the Mahlerian canon that felt so organic — moving forward purposefully in a way that closely observed the composer’s detailed markings while always keeping the larger {…}
"An intensely physical conductor, Mäkelä seized on contrasts in the first movement (Mahler Symphony No. 5) and teased out inner lines glossed over in calmer readings. The second, too, he attacked with lusty vigor, while preserving a certain dance-like quality, and the standing ovation that immediately followed the performance was an apt response to a bountifully animated {…}
