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 brilliant form.”

Volkskrant, Maartje Stokkers, 9 March 2023


“The result was a spectacularly painful, feverish intensity that allowed the listener to forget even the smallest details. Loud-quiet contrasts, accelerandi and crescendi, brass attacks and string brilliance – it always went to that dramatic extreme that inevitably pulls the audience out of their armchairs.”

Kölner Stadt Anzeiger, Markus Schwering, 10 March 2023

“Mäkelä does not do much for effect, and yet everything is enormously effective. It is impressive how he knows how to create tension, how he ensures intensity and – here too – lively music-making.”

Krönen Zeitung, Oliver Lang, 13 March 2023


“Mäkelä makes the sounds dance. He drives, but his passion is never violent … Especially Berlioz’s country scene, which often drags on rather aridly for 20 minutes, becomes with Mäkelä a midsummer love night’s dream trembling with anticipation, making the fears of every lover palpable.”

Süddeutsche Zeitung, Reinhard Brembeck, 16 March 2023

“In Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, the core repertoire of this orchestra, Mäkelä experimented, but too much. He relied on tempo, fortissimi, effects and his obvious joy in making music. This was at the expense of the essence of this work.”

Kurier, Susanne Zobl, 16 March 2023

Programme:
Jean Sibelius: Violin concerto
Hector Berlioz: Symphonie fantastique
Soloist: Janine Jansen