"Friday night's performance of Mahler's colossal Eighth Symphony can already be credited in the annals as one of the absolute highlights of the Mahler Festival 2025. Klaus Mäkelä led nearly four hundred musicians and singers through the two movements of a symphony that was already labeled Symphonie der Tausend at its premiere (Munich, 1910). And although Mahler himself did not like {…}
"In Amsterdam, everything reminds us of Mahler … But the soul of the festival is, of course, the Concertgebouw itself. Mahler found there not only a warm audience and an orchestra whose violins he found ‘as beautiful as in Vienna’, but also acoustics he considered ideal. That is why listening to his works today, in this magical hall and in a continuous series, is so {…}
"From the eight horns’ majestic fanfare that opens the 100-minute journey (Mahler Symphony No. 3), this was a boldly projected and full-voiced performance, very much a young man’s Mahler. Yet under Mäkelä’s attentive direction, the long movement unfolded as a single whole without ever losing concentration or intensity. Every timbre and dynamic shift came across, from the {…}
"At the Vienna Musikverein – together with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra – Mäkelä's presence is already palpable in Arnold Schoenberg's lullaby-like "Verklärte Nacht" (Transfigured Night): Despite the opulence of the orchestral arrangement, in this exceptional late Romantic setting, the details and the individual gesture are important to him. Thus, he lends inner compactness {…}
"Intense and imbued with spirituality: Gubaidulina's 'Offertorium' is insanely good … The intensity of Julian Rachlin's violin playing fits perfectly, and the orchestral sound - with a glittering halo above the low strings in that chorale - is strikingly concise. Santa Vizine's tender tone is imbued with spirituality in her beautiful viola solo.”De Volkskrant, Merlijn Kerkohf, 27 {…}
"Pictures at an Exhibition in Maurice Ravel's brilliant orchestration has rarely been heard played with such verve and forward-looking power ... The thunderous witch’s ride “The Hut of Baba Yaga” led in a stringent build-up of tension into the fast-paced finale “The Great Gate of Kiev”, which Mäkelä dramaturgically cleverly designed by taking back the four-fold recurring {…}
