Klaus Meckella was named Tuesday to succeed Riccardo Muti as music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, becoming the youngest conductor since its inception in 1891.
A Finn who turned 28 in January, Mekela has had an astonishing rise in the music world, becoming Principal Guest Conductor of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra in 2018-19, then Principal Conductor of the Oslo Philharmonic in 2020-21 .and music director of the Orchester de Paris in 2021-22.He is to begin a five-year term as chief conductor of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in the Netherlands in 2027-28 following the expiry of his contracts in Norway and France.
Mäkelä will immediately become appointed music director of the CSO and will begin a five-year term in 2027-28, conducting a minimum of 14 weeks per season. Mäkelä will be the youngest American music director with a major orchestra since Gustavo Dudamel was 28 when he started with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2009.
“It’s just something I don’t think about,” Mekela said during an interview with The Associated Press. “I was just reminded when I started in Amsterdam that I’m actually not even young, (Willem) Mengelberg was 24 when he started.”
Mutti was the music director for 13 seasons before retiring last summer before his 82nd birthday. Mäkelä will be 31 years, seven months and 16 days old when he starts on 1 September 2027. The previous youngest conductor was Frederik Stock aged 32 years, 5 months and 1 day when he was appointed on 11 April 1905 .to succeed founding music director Theodore Thomas.
Mäkelä will take over an orchestra much older than himself. Among the 93 members, Muti made 32 appointments and Daniel Barenboim 28, with most of the rest to Georg Solti. Principal trombone Jay Friedman and harpist Lynn Turner were hired by Fritz Reiner, music director from 1953-62.
“What I like about the Chicago Symphony is that there’s quite a bit of it that still sounds like it did with Reiner,” Mäkelä said.
He conducted the CSO for the first time in April 2022 in a program including Stravinsky’s The Firebird.
“When you conduct an orchestra for the first time, it’s kind of a chemistry,” Mäkelä said. “I felt like, well, this orchestra is willing to go places with me that I haven’t done with other orchestras.”
CSO President Jeff Alexander attended the first rehearsal.
“You said, ‘Good morning.’ Let’s start and we got straight into the music,” Alexander recalled during a joint interview. “Very often a guest conductor will talk and talk and talk about the piece, but I think the musicians appreciate the fact that they just got down to business. So I stayed for the first 10 or 15 minutes and I can tell you that I already felt something really special was happening.
Mäkelä returned in February 2023 for Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. Alexander then began negotiations. The announcement was timed ahead of Mäkelä’s performances with the CSO this week, which include Shostakovich’s 10th Symphony.
“When you see Klaus conduct, there’s such a connection between him and the orchestra, and you can just feel it, and then between him and the audience,” Alexander said.
Mäkelä’s hiring comes at a time when several other major US institutions have upcoming podium vacancies, including Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Los Angeles Opera and San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. As music director of an American orchestra, Mäkelä’s role will include a fundraising component.
“I don’t think it will actually be that drastically different from working in Amsterdam and Paris,” he said. “In Oslo we have 100% of the funding from the state and zero is private, but then in Amsterdam it’s already 50-50 and there’s a lot of work to do and it’s also very much in my interest because then we can achieve things together if we find the right partnerships .”
Mäkelä played the cello as a child – his father was a cello teacher and his mother a piano instructor. He remembers attending concerts given by the Finnish conductor Hannu Lintu in Helsinki and decided on his future vocation when he was 7 years old and sang in the children’s choir of the Finnish National Opera in Bizet’s Carmen. He was transfixed as he watched the conductor on the backstage monitor.
“It sounds like a silly story, but it’s really true — as of this moment,” Makela said.
After studying cello at the Sibelius Academy, he took a conducting class with Jorma Panula, whose students included Esa-Pekka Salonen and Susanna Melki. He was first included as a cellist with the Helsinki Philharmonic when he was 15, after which he was asked to conduct. He conducted the Oslo Philharmonic for the first time in May 2018 and a series of debuts followed. He made his debut at the Berlin Philharmonic in April 2023 and is due to make his debut at the Vienna Philharmonic this December. Decca Classics signed him as an exclusive recording artist in 2021, a rarity in 21st century classical music.
With all the symphonic work, Mäkelä finds little time for opera, where stays of one to two months are the norm.
He lives in Helsinki but was not there until the end of March this year. Mäkelä spends most of his time in Paris and Oslo, and getting results to the right place proves time-consuming.
“I have FedEx, DHL and UPS all the time, and of course I always forget the score,” he said. “I want to have my own results because I write stuff.”
He is already considering his initial programs in Chicago.
“It has to be something that is a very clear beginning, a clear new chapter,” he said. “It has to be music that keeps me and the orchestra on my toes a bit, because it has to be anything but a comfort zone.”
