A handful of arts media have braved an early April 2024 snowstorm to experience Klaus Mäkelä’s Chicago Symphony Orchestra rehearsal. It’s his first since he was announced as CSO music director designate the day before.

While orchestra musicians are warming up, assistant concertmaster David Taylor walks down from the Orchestra Hall stage out into the seats, instrument and bow in hand.

Is Taylor excited about the announcement of Klaus Mäkelä as music director designate?

“Oh yeah. He’s incredible. It’s not just the big stuff, because he has energy to spare. It’s also the subtlety. And being a fine cellist as he is, he really understands strings and bowings and all of that. But he’s not overly fussy that way, which is also nice. He leaves a lot to the players. He has so much color. He uses that word in his vocabulary a lot, ‘color.’

“After I first played with him for five minutes, it was clear that this guy is out of the ordinary. He’s got the hands and the movements and the personality. I love the smile, the demeanor on stage. He’s a real detail freak without being a freak.”

Twenty-eight-years old at the time of the CSO announcement, the Helsinki-born Mäkelä is the chief conductor of the Oslo Philharmonic as well as music director of the Orchestre de Paris, holding both positions until 2027. (In announcing its 2025-26 season in late August, the Oslo Philharmonic indicated it would be Mäkelä’s last as chief conductor.) Mäkelä has a five-year contract with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and a ten-year contract with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam, both beginning at the start of the 2027-28 season. Mäkelä will be thirty-one.

“You go online and you see, he’s everywhere. This guy is really going to be the big one. He is already. With a job like this, what else could he do? He’s going to be incredible.”

Leading either orchestra would be unprecedented at such an early age. (Mäkelä will be the youngest-ever music director of the CSO and second youngest-ever chief conductor of the Concertgebouw.) But to lead both the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra simultaneously is like running Chrysler and General Motors at the same time.

“It’s a lot,” says Taylor. “He’s also a sweetheart. I can tell you that one -on-one, he’s the friendliest guy. Yesterday as he came off the podium, he gave me a big hug and said, ‘What violin are you playing today?’ He knows his instruments.”

Mäkelä is almost unrecognizable as he strolls onto the Orchestra Hall stage to a pre-tuning symphonic cacophony. He’s dressed in tight slacks and a striped button-down shirt with low open collar, rather than his concert attire of a bulky and overlong tuxedo and dark butterfly bowtie.

“Good morning: hello, everyone,” he says to the orchestra with his distinctively Finnish accent, as he energetically ascends the podium like a lanky prizefighter entering a ring.

As Mäkelä picks up his baton, principal clarinet Stephen Williamson cues the fourth movement finale of the Shostakovich Tenth Symphony. Mäkelä’s movements become more animated as the music grows increasingly quirky and frantic. “Eighth notes, very short,” says Mäkelä, after a brief interruption. “Good.”

A few bars go by before another pause, as Mäkelä hums a phrase indicating the way he wants the emphasis, color and dynamics to go. The stops are frequent, the corrections collegial and complimentary. “Very good, but it can be even better if you play longer followed by shorter.”

Mäkelä keeps the pace all-consuming, even with stops, maintaining a stride that necessitates players’ eyes stay on him.

There are also in-jokes along the way, often too quiet to be heard offstage, that place players at ease with humor that are followed by intense laughter from the orchestra.

Coming to the third slow movement, Mäkelä assesses, “Quite strong. In terms of color, it’s absolutely wonderful. But less intense. And a little diminuendo. Are there any questions or requests?” he asks before the break.

Stepping down onto the main floor with the media assembled next to him during the respite, Mäkelä has a European sense of space and stands inches away while interacting. His skin is like porcelain, his hair the color of corn silk, with ocean-blue eyes accentuated by wide-eyed raises of his eyebrows. The smile is fixed, yet real. He is soft-spoken yet manages to exude constant and contagious joy.

“I’m sorry to keep you waiting,” says Mäkelä, who had been backstage at the beginning of the break. “It’s very nice to see you. How lovely you could all come.”

Mäkelä notices a colleague has a Finnish last name, and is asked by another if his mother is a dancer. If so, had he taken classes with her given his ability to “dance” on the podium?

“Thank you! My sister is a dancer. I danced a little bit, but my sister is much better. She lives in Spain now; she’s a bit younger than me, five years younger. Of course, you have a great ballet here, the Joffrey Ballet. There is a Finnish artistic director at the Boston Ballet [Mikko Nissinen].”

When someone mentions that Mäkelä can catch Joffrey performances when he is in Chicago, he says, “I would love to.”

As a cellist, a colleague wonders, what does Mäkelä think of the CSO cello section?

“They play very beautifully. I like them a lot. They are also nice people. Cellists are always the easiest people to approach. You can always have a cello talk. It’s very comfortable. Always when I meet a new orchestra, on the first break, I go and chat with the cellists. We always speak the same language. The cello is a great instrument because it’s not terribly difficult but you get to play the nice tunes.”

Has Mäkelä had a chance to play chamber music with any Chicago Symphony musicians yet?

“Not yet, but we should do that. And we will do that. It’s really nice and a good way to bond with the musicians. In Paris [with Orchestre de Paris players] we played at the Louvre, in the galleries.”

Why did Mäkelä choose the Shostakovich Tenth Symphony to perform with the CSO?

“The Shostakovich 10 is one of those pieces that I definitely wanted to do with this orchestra because in a way, it’s his most perfect symphony. The form is perfect. I just did the Eleventh a few weeks ago in Paris and I’ve done a lot of the others: 4, 5, 6, 7 and the rest. But the Tenth in a way is the ultimate form. And it’s so lovely to do with an orchestra where you can really see, ‘Okay, how can we get the string sound and the brass in position and the tension and everything?’ So it’s a very good piece for that.”

Does Mäkelä remember his very first encounter with this piece?

“Yes, I played it with an orchestra [as a cellist], with the Helsinki Philharmonic. It is also a very nice part to play. That was the first time. But that was a long time ago. It feels like another lifetime now.

“I wish I would have a bit more time—maybe tomorrow—to come and listen a bit to see how it sounds in the hall. I heard the [CSO] Bach concert yesterday. Of course, the registration was rather different from today. It was very nice, the atmosphere out in the hall. One doesn’t feel too far away, even if you’re sitting higher up. [The sound] seems quite reliable. The Concertgebouw [in Amsterdam] is very difficult because what you hear on stage is completely different from what you hear in the hall.”

For all the talk of the legendary acoustics of the Concertgebouw, that is surprising.

“I know. It’s the most beautiful hall to listen at, but it’s nightmarish to work at. You don’t hear anything on stage and then you try to see,” Mäkelä says, squinting as if looking out into the distance. “‘Okay, which player is playing? I think he or she is playing at the right time.’ And then you have to guess quite a lot. You have to get to know the weaknesses and strengths of the acoustic. But this acoustic seems quite reliable, more or less.”

It’s dry.

“It is dry, yeah. And the orchestra sits on risers, which is very unusual for an American orchestra.”

When the hall was renovated in 1997, that was one of the attempted improvements.

“Ahh. So that would be under Barenboim. I see. Did the balance change radically with that?”

Not radically, but it did improve. Before the 1966 renovation, however, Orchestra Hall used to be wood like the Musikverein in Vienna. These chairs were wooden, as were the floors. The legendary Reiner recordings were made here before the 1966 renovation, which carpeted the hall and the chairs were plushly upholstered.

“I see. Okay. That’s interesting. It feels very nice to work from the stage because you can hear the orchestra. And you can relay to them and most of the players can hear you quite well.”

Besides the previous evening’s CSO Bach concert, has Mäkelä heard other performances in Orchestra Hall?

“Some. I heard the Civic Orchestra last year playing the Franck Symphony. And I heard Leif Andsnes play Mozart. That was two years ago [February of 2022, Mäkelä’s CSO debut at age twenty-six]. I was sitting there,” Mäkelä says, pointing up to the boxes. “Maybe I should go a bit higher.”

If one can tolerate the steep stairs and angles, the Gallery is believed to have the best sound in Orchestra Hall.

“It’s interesting that it’s like that. How is the Shostakovich? Is [the volume] at the limit or is it almost too loud? Or is it kind of bearable?”

It is right at the edge.

“Yeah. But it should not be more?”

If Mäkelä wants to be on the edge, he’s perfect.

“Okay. That’s very good.”

“What say the rest of the group?” asks the CSO publicist from the back.

“Really intense, but it does not blare,” a colleague says.

“Maybe with more people in the hall, that will definitely put a lid on the sound. In Amsterdam with the Mahler 6, it was simply too loud. You have to play really softer. But the hall is so difficult. But in Paris, you can actually play much stronger and the hall can take it. The ‘Leningrad’ Symphony and this kind of stuff.

“We just had a tour with [Orchestre de] Paris in America.”

That did not stop in Chicago.

“I know. It would have been fantastic!”

Ann Arbor, Michigan was as close as that tour came to Chicago.

“That was very nice. But the halls were very different. The sound was so different, the balance. It changed quite a lot of things. And Carnegie Hall, it was my first time there. That was so nice. The acoustics are really good. It was really nice. And also Boston.”

Those are wonderful halls, our best American halls.

A colleague asks how many American orchestras has Mäkelä had a chance to conduct?

“Not that many. I go to Cleveland a lot. After this week here, I then go to Cleveland for the next two weeks. I’ve been to San Francisco, we also did Shostakovich Ten. It was not that good, but maybe I shouldn’t say that. Minnesota, that was my first. As a Scandinavian, that was really nice. They were also very supportive. [Music director] Osmo Vänskä played chamber music with my grandfather, who plays the viola. [Vänskä] is a clarinet player.

“I was in New York, it was very pleasant in the new hall. I was supposed to go to Boston but it was during the pandemic, so it was cancelled.”

This is Mäkelä’s first and only 2024 residency as CSO music director designate. The Bartók Second Piano Concerto with pianist Yuja Wang was to have been on the program, but Wang withdrew from performances with Mäkelä in Chicago and Cleveland—where she was scheduled to perform Ravel and Stravinsky—without explanation and with only a few days’ notice. The couple had a widely reported upon and acknowledged relationship since 2022, but had reportedly broken up months earlier in January 2024. The last-minute Chicago replacement was Argentine cellist Sol Gabetta performing the Shostakovich First Cello Concerto. The U.S. premiere of Finnish composer Sauli Zinovjev’s “Batteria” was always part of the program.

“It’s a very strong piece,” says Mäkelä of “Batteria.” “I hope you will enjoy it. It’s a good piece to represent [Zinovjev] as his first performance in America. They played something of his in Canada, I think. Toronto or Ottawa, but not in the States. I’m very proud. I think it’s the best kind of start here he could have.

“I’ve done ‘Batteria’ a lot, it’s one of Zinovjev’s best pieces,” says Mäkelä as he opens the score. “It’s one continuous accelerando. It starts very tragically, after the terrorist attacks in Nice in 2016, and kind of echoes that in the beginning but it’s a really beautiful piece. I commissioned many pieces from [Zinovjev], but not this one. This one I like the most. He did some that are a bit larger-scale, a bit longer. But this is wonderful.

“I’ve done it in a lot of different countries, with different orchestras. It always works somehow. People respond. Orchestras find it pleasant to play for the strings, for the winds, even for the piano. It’s a very virtuosic piano part which unfortunately, easily gets a little bit lost in the acoustic, but we try to make it audible. It’s a really nice, good piece.”

As the break ends and Mäkelä has to resume the rehearsal, he says to the media, “It is so nice of you to come. See you later.”

The three performances are a huge success: sold-out, Mäkelä greeted like a rock star with thunderous applause by the audiences each night and rave reviews from near and far.

The opening and final performances both have post-concert receptions for donors in the ballroom.

“Are you happy?” asks Henry Fogel at the Saturday reception, the former Chicago Symphony president and CEO and Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University dean emeritus.

For a conductor his age, I indicate I have never quite experienced what Mäkelä has to offer.

“I’ll tell you who was close,” says Fogel. “Esa-Pekka Salonen.”

A Finnish conductor of another generation who had the same teacher as Mäkelä, Jorma Panula.

“Yes. I brought Salonen in his first year of guesting in the United States, discovered by Ernest Fleischmann. It was 1982 or 1983 and Salonen did the Nielson 4. He looks young now, but back then, he came to the rehearsal in a polo shirt and jeans. He looked like a high-school kid.

“I stood up to introduce him to the orchestra and besides everything else, he had an unusual name. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, this week’s guest conductor: Esa-Pekka Salonen.’ They looked at me like, ‘Is this a joke?’ I sat down. Within five minutes of the rehearsal, the musicians were looking at me in disbelief. They knew right away.

“What I understand about this scenario is it was the orchestra that descended on the search committee after [Mäkelä’s] first concert here, ‘The Firebird.’”

Which I didn’t hear.

“I didn’t either. The musicians descended on the search committee, and there are six of them on the search committee.”

There are criticisms that a deal was reached far too quickly, some feeling that Mäkelä needed more time to develop and get more experience. There was also the issue that the CSO would be without a music director from 2023-2027. I wrote that Mäkelä should be considered as music director after his decade in Amsterdam when, at forty-one, he would still be young by conductor standards.

The backdrop of the rush may be that in 2007, when then-twenty-five-year-old Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel made his CSO debut conducting the Mahler First Symphony, some were advocating that he should become music director. (Daniel Barenboim had stepped down in 2006.)

“That week is when L.A. hired [Dudamel] and when they announced that they had,” says Fogel.

It wasn’t as if Chicago, under Fogel’s successor and then-CSO president and CEO Deborah Rutter, didn’t try.

“It was too late,” says Fogel. “By the time Chicago tried, the L.A. deal was done.”

With Mäkelä, things moved very quickly. There was the concern that like Dudamel, Mäkelä could get away and land elsewhere, and Chicago would never have the opportunity to procure him as music director again.

“And that could well be true,” says Fogel. “Cleveland was absolutely clamoring for him. The week before [Mäkelä] did the Mahler 5 here [in February 2023], he did it in Cleveland. Board members in Cleveland and Chicago were both courting him in kind, and his manager Jasper Parrott was with him in both cities.

“And to think that Esa-Pekka Salonen put me in as a judge in a conducting competition in Helsinki in 1995, one year before this guy was born.”

There is applause from across the ballroom as Mäkelä enters and makes his way to the podium in a gray suit. There are constant compliments, hugs and selfies along the way. CSO president and CEO Jeff Alexander will make the introduction and is also accepting compliments on the way to the podium.

“They’re playing their hearts out for him,” says Fogel’s son Karl to Alexander. “You rarely see an orchestra play like that.”

“They’re loving it,” acknowledges Alexander. “Thank god.”

“I don’t think he would have come [to Chicago] if they didn’t love it,” says Fogel.

“I think this boy will make a success,” jokes former Ravinia Festival president and former president of the New York Philharmonic Zarin Mehta.

“Thank you very, very much,” says Mäkelä from the podium after Alexander’s introduction to a rousing ovation. “It’s been a very special week with the orchestra. We started Tuesday and from the first moment, I was extremely impressed with what they could do. I started immediately searching—what can we do together? What kind of sound can we get? What kind of balance? I truly enjoy that they play with such passion, such excellence, such brilliance. It’s really a great honor to start our journey together. I can’t wait. Thank you so much to everyone involved.”

After stepping away, Mäkelä catches my eye and calls out, “Good to see you!” He offers a hearty embrace as I congratulate him. Was he leaving for Cleveland the next day? “No, I’m here for tomorrow afternoon’s Yo-Yo Ma recital. I’m flying in Monday morning, but there is a solar eclipse in Cleveland that afternoon, so I don’t know how that could affect the flight.”

As a veteran total-eclipse chaser, I try to persuade Mäkelä to catch it if he will arrive in time, and if he can get to the narrow band of totality within Cleveland. He is wide-eyed and excited at the prospect, and we work out details of getting him a map with times and details. “Nature is so wonderful,” he says.

Mäkelä’s manager Jasper Parrott, a legendary British arts figure who co-founded the Europe-based HarrisonParrott classical music agency in 1969, is nearby. We had met up in Detroit in the mid-1980s and worked together on a project with his then-client and Academy of Ancient Music founder Christopher Hogwood. As others greet Mäkelä, we reminisce about the late Hogwood and discuss the extraordinary phenomenon that Parrott has discovered in the young Finnish conductor.

“I’m seventy-nine,” says Parrott, “so I will not be here to see the full fruition of all that [Mäkelä] will do and become. But my mother did live to be 103. But one thing will not change: I will always be fifty-three years older.”

As guests depart and the evening winds down, I ask Alexander about the odd timing of the seemingly last-minute music-director-designate announcement. Was it always going to happen this week?

“It was going to be announced last November [2023]. We basically decided last February [2023] when Klaus came in and did the Mahler Fifth. There were things to work out, of course. Then we were thinking, ‘When should we announce it?’ When I say ‘we,’ I mean Klaus, me, his PR people and the orchestras.

“Then the timing of the announcement kept changing. And changing and changing and changing. And then finally I said, ‘We’re not going to wait longer than the week he is here.’ And here we are.”

In late April 2025, Mäkelä is back in Chicago for two weeks, his only residency as music director designate during the 2024-25 season.

A slightly larger group of media than a year earlier is waiting for him during the intermission of an orchestra-only rehearsal of the Mahler Third Symphony.

A radio reporter asks Mäkelä if he is enjoying his time in Chicago.

“Very much. It’s lovely. I arrived some days ago and I haven’t had much time off, but I am interacting with people all the time, and the people are lovely. The orchestra is great. We had a really lovely moment when we saw each other again. It feels really nice. It feels like a good start because obviously, this is just a start.

“It’s lovely to be doing Mahler 3. It’s wonderful to see the orchestra again. Of course, it’s been a year, but there was a lot of enthusiasm. It’s the perfect piece to start. But I’m also very happy because next week we do Dvorák, Brahms and Boulez as well, which is very nice because this is the time where we’re getting to know each other. Of course, we know each other a little bit, but all things in life take time.”

What has been Mäkelä’s own experience with the Mahler Third Symphony? Did he play it in the cello section of an orchestra as he had the Shostakovich Tenth Symphony that he performed here a year ago?

“Actually, I never played it,” Mäkelä admits, with a look of surprise. “But this is one of the symphonies I always felt very close to for some reason. It somehow resonated. It’s very funny because it’s very non-symphonic. Mahler called it a ‘humoresque’ in many letters, although the first and the last movements do have strong structure.”

Does he recall who was conducting?

“Actually, I never heard Mahler 3 live. The Finnish people know it very well because it was Esa-Pekka Salonen’s piece; he jumped in to do it for MTT [Michael Tilson-Thomas]. So everyone there knows the piece. I did it in Oslo for the first time.”

Are there recordings that Mäkelä is fond of?

“Yes, I would say one of my favorite recordings is the last recording with [Riccardo] Chailly and Amsterdam, which I think he did in the early 2000s. It’s brilliant. It’s really beautifully played. That was one of the last recordings where they took all the seats away and the orchestra was sitting where the audience would ordinarily sit. So the sound is completely different, but you still get the Concertgebouw ambience. It’s interesting.”

A colleague says that he attended Mäkelä’s performance of the Mahler Third Symphony with the Cleveland Orchestra last October, and wondered if there were differences in the playing of the two orchestras that he would like to highlight?

“Everything. Everything is different. Two great orchestras. The benefit of great orchestras is that they each have a deep identity that is different. As we know, there are differences also in the halls, in the history of the orchestras and the music directors have been very different. But they are two great orchestras and of course, it’s always a pleasure [to conduct them]. I also did this piece a lot with the Concertgebouw Orchestra [and] also at the Musikverein. It’s always interesting. You take something with you from each experience. I get deeper.

“Of course, this symphony is so philosophical, based mostly on Nietzsche but also the delightful pessimism of Schopenhauer. Although as we think about it, the symphony doesn’t actually have as much darkness as many of the texts [Mahler] was inspired by. Still, the first movement has a lot of drama, and you want to bring that out because it’s kind of a journey to transcendence. The beginning really needs to be dramatic and dark enough in order to get to the next level through the second and third movements. And then man finally finds his voice with the mezzo soprano and then angels enter in transcendence.”

Another colleague wonders how important Bernard Haitink has been to Mäkelä’s development.

“Yes, quite a lot. But I must say, [Willem] Mengelberg more. Mengelberg is such an interesting example, very extreme. I believe he was a much more diverse conductor than what we hear on his recordings, because many of the recordings came from the end of his life. And we know from his letters and from journalists that at the time, his interpretations became more and more exaggerated. But when one goes through his scores, for example, his understanding of the pieces from the scores is incredible.

“I actually find it more interesting to read other conductors’ scores than to listen to their recordings. For example, with Bernstein, we have most, but not all, of his scores available at the New York Philharmonic Digital Archives, and that somehow reveals so much of who he was. It’s incredible. One learns more from that than from his recordings because you can really see how he marked his scores and what he really thought about the pieces. Some really good little things there that one can steal.”

Are there composers of Mäkelä’s generation that he is particularly interested in, a colleague asks.

“So many. Now is a great time for new music. It’s really wonderful.

“One of the great names to me is [American] Andrew Norman, a wonderful composer. I think his work ‘Play’ is the Bartók ‘Concerto for Orchestra’ of our time. It’s an incredible piece. I just did it in Oslo. We worked on it together for a week, he came for the whole week. We had five days of rehearsals with him in the audience, only for that piece. It was wonderful. It’s great to be working with a living composer.

“In a way, that actually teaches you a lot, because you should work on every piece—old or new—in the same way. With the same curiosity and trying to understand why the composer did this or that.”

An opera writer asks what genre of opera interests Mäkelä.

“The thing is, I love lots of different operas. Naturally, with a great orchestra like this, one is keen to do operas that have a great orchestral part. Let’s see what we will do.

“But of course, I have dodged the bullet of opera for quite a long time. But now I’m doing more and more in Europe. In Amsterdam, we are an opera orchestra one month a year. We have this responsibility with the Dutch National Opera. So it’s lovely; it’s a repertoire that I am slowly getting to know, but I want to choose pieces I really enjoy.”

What are Mäkelä’s language skills?

“Well, my German is—I went to German school. But French, I still have to learn more. It’s embarrassing. I just told the [Orchestre de Paris] ‘Bonjour’ the other day, and they clapped. I don’t think that’s a compliment!”

Has Mäkelä started recruiting in earnest for vacancies in the orchestra?

“Yes. We already have one of our players, Gabriella [Lara]. She’s playing.”

Venezuelan violinist Lara was the first hire Mäkelä made as CSO music director designate. Mäkelä came to Chicago for violin and cello finals in October of 2024. Ten positions were open but only Lara was hired. The announcement was made in December 2024.

“We have three auditions scheduled over the next two weeks. I’m very excited. I love it. It’s a great responsibility and a great opportunity. It’s a great time. The Chicago Symphony is such a wonderful opportunity that people want to play here. That brings us very good candidates. And that’s naturally a wonderful thing. The best. And if you don’t find the best, you do a new audition.”

San Francisco principal trombone Tim Higgins had reportedly won Monday’s principal trombone audition and was already performing that role for Mäkelä’s Mahler Third rehearsal. No official confirmation [Higgins was announced as CSO principal trombone two days before the start of the 2025-26 season in September], but Higgins traverses the trombone solo in the first movement and Mäkelä calls out, “Bravo!” as it concludes. The entire orchestra spontaneously bursts into applause.

At a media reception after the rehearsal, I ask trombonist Michael Mulcahy if he is excited about his new colleague.

“We got it right,” he says. “We needed the stars to come into alignment. It’s important that the people judging know what the emphases are. That was made very clear by the repertoire choices and a little bit of explanation. Klaus is extremely demanding, and I was able to assure him that I had confidence in my ability to answer any questions and address any reservations that he may have.”

So Mulcahy knows Timothy Higgins well?

“He was my student. Of the people who played behind the screen, three of the five were students of mine.”

Mulcahy, an Australian native, was appointed to the CSO by then-music director Sir Georg Solti in 1989 and has led the trombone studio at Northwestern University since 1999. He also conducts and is the director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Brass Ensemble.

The CSO is renowned for its brass section and musicians come to Chicago to study with its players. Higgins is from Houston and attended Northwestern, where he studied with Mulcahy.

“It is exciting,” Mulcahy says, to have multiple students get so far in the audition process and for one to prevail.

“But also the fact that they understand the style of sound production required. Not forcing and playing with purity and being steady. Having a wide dynamic range, especially when soft. And ‘singing’ with your instrument.

“There were people who played perfectly in terms of not missing a note, but that’s not what we’re trying to find out. You have different metrics to judge someone’s quality. ‘That one is one-percent more perfect than that one.’ But there’s a much bigger picture.”

Playing with personality. Everyone sat up today.

“Exactly.”

Like Mulcahy, principal bass Alexander Hanna was one of six CSO musicians on the search committee that chose Mäkelä. The other six members were CSO board members and administrators.

“I’m glad that’s done,” says Hanna, joking. “It was an honor to serve, an honor to be elected by my colleagues. But it was a huge responsibility. Enormous. Conversations always started with, ‘Who is the greatest conductor in the world?’ And, ‘How are we going to get him or her?’”

Was there a consensus on that?

“We examined every possibility. We were very thorough.”

Wouldn’t the obvious answer to that question by any objective measure be Riccardo Muti, the music director emeritus for life who Mäkelä is ultimately succeeding?

“It’s such a different time. I’m really happy with the legacy we’ve had here of music directors. My gosh. I’ve been taking notes all these years from Maestro Muti because I’ve learned so much from him about music and about life. What a gift to have had him! I’ve had thirteen years with him. He’s going to continue, of course. And I think we’re in good hands. I’m really looking forward to the future.”

Does Hanna think the orchestra feels that way as a whole?

“I think so.”

None of Hanna’s orchestra colleagues have come up to him and said, “What are you folks doing?”

“Nobody has come up to me. I don’t know about my [committee] colleagues.

“One question mark was how was Maestro Mäkelä going to do auditions? We need many positions filled right now. I know some are not a done deal yet, but I’ve been very impressed with his choices thus far.”

Those who are critical of Mäkelä’s age forget that age is a problem time will solve. But does having such enormous responsibilities—before there has been the opportunity to master a vast repertoire—a potential problem the committee considered? When is there time to study? To learn scores? While jet-setting across continents?

“I have yet to see Maestro Mäkelä not be extremely curious about an artistic endeavor. With time, it will come.”

There are those convinced that the pressure will all be too much for him.

“Do you think those who say such things have heard him conduct live? He reads a lot. He studies a lot. He is curious. He has lived experience that is extraordinary. I think there are good indications that he’s on the right track. If he’s lacking anything as a person, with age he is going to continue to become wiser and more experienced. I’m optimistic that our future will be really special.”

Assistant concertmaster Yuan-Qing Yu, who was also on the search committee, agrees.

“I thought today’s rehearsal was handled well,” says Yu, “especially the last movement. [Mäkelä] was able to change this long line which I think usually comes with age. I’m happy. We’re really getting worked on. I like it when we feel like we’re working. He’s very collegial and he’s always listening.”

When I mention to Yu that, so far, we’ve been hearing big, flashy pieces such as Mahler and Shostakovich from Mäkelä rather than, say, Mozart, she says, “It will come.”

The Thursday opening performance of the Mahler Third Symphony is consistent with the conception Mäkelä had been working on, with a fascinating change in his apparel: for the first time, he was wearing well-fitted white tie and tails while conducting in Chicago.

Sunday morning, Mäkelä is holding his first-ever rehearsal with the Civic Orchestra, the training orchestra of the CSO in Buntrock Hall. The session was billed as a “reading” of the Dvorák Seventh Symphony, which happens to be on the following week’s Mäkelä-conducted CSO program.

The small group of guests sitting in the back of the hall with the same front-on view of Mäkelä that the players have. That perspective reveals that as Mäkelä conducts, his hair flops down from the sides, forming bangs over his eyes as they meet in the middle, then pushed back only to shortly fall back down again.

As Mäkelä walks in through the back and says hello as he passes us, a colleague quietly remarks that at twenty-nine, Mäkelä could be playing in the Civic Orchestra.

“Good morning, everyone,” Mäkelä says as he reaches the podium. “Lovely to meet you. Thanks for taking time today. It’s lovely. Have you read a lot of Dvorák in your life? Great composer. Wonderful composer. The symphonies have a very special language, suggesting Brahms very slightly. Brahms was eight years older and a little bit of a mentor to Dvorák. But Dvorák really managed to have his own language while also taking a lot from Brahms.

“This is the symphony that is closest to Brahms. He heard the Third Symphony of Brahms being played and was very inspired, and wrote his own piece somehow inspired by the atmosphere.

“Why don’t we just play something and try to find the shapes and smells and stuff.”

The orchestra lightly laughs.

Mäkelä conducts the first and second movements straight through, attentive with constant arm motion and eye contact, but without saying a word.

“It’s beautiful, no? Dvorák wrote beautiful melodies and Brahms was very jealous. Be free. Not as precisely written down as, say, Mahler 3 like last night. If we start looking at the bars, it gives us accents. Play it like you paint. Let’s try to find the right strokes. How about very broad brush strokes? Let’s see what happens. I will watch out for you.”

After starting, Mäkelä says, “The beginning is to be very, very soft. Slower than you want to play it.” Mäkelä hums the beginning of the first movement. “We play all the notes in the right place, but it has a shape, yeah? Even if you play the notes right, I need to feel the connection to going up and then going down. Little gestures can make a big difference.”

Playing further, Mäkelä interrupts to say, “When you play in an orchestra, no matter which piece—Mahler, Shostakovich, Dvorák and this piece in particular—always have a sense of the values. There are lots of notes in the strings in fortissimo so we can’t hear the winds. Always in a place like this, it is allowed to play a little bit less if you have a feeling that you will cover someone else. You need to know your part so well that you can see it through others’ perspective. It was very beautiful. Let’s move on. Let’s do the second movement.

“Bravo. It sounds very good. It’s a nice theme. Very simple. Try to make it sound unusually sweet. You have a golden sound, nice and round. Think of it like a procession with lots of bright colors.”

Taking up the third movement scherzo, Mäkelä says, “You play very well. But it doesn’t have the fire. When you play a dance, it needs to be different than when you play something else. Scherzos in symphonies are usually dances. There is less of a Slavonic influence here than in the ‘Slavonic Dances.’”

Traversing the last movement finale, Mäkelä says, “With Strauss and Mahler, everything is written out. But we need to be able to speak the language of Dvorák. Invisible music needs to be able to speak. Whatever you play, say something. Neutral is the worst.”

The players seem skeptical at the beginning of the rehearsal, but quickly warm to Mäkelä’s generosity, knowledge and clarity. At the end, they applaud vigorously.

“I hope I will see you soon. Good luck with everything! Cheers.”

The CSO open rehearsal for donors of the same piece a few days later is far more technical. The short Boulez piece “Initiale” is also given a cursory read-through at the end of the rehearsal. That week’s program also included the Brahms Second Piano Concerto with Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov that was not part of that rehearsal.

As one who has been listening to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on recordings since I was a child; has attended CSO concerts for over fifty years; and has been covering CSO concerts as a critic for over forty years, how do those experiences figure into what might be expected from the Mäkelä era?

For those who insist that Mäkelä is overly ambitious in “collecting” major orchestra appointments, in every case it appears he was not so much seeking such appointments as he was asked to take them. Now that I have seen him do what he does so well up close and firsthand in rehearsal and performance over an extended period, I can understand why he was asked. I also understand why so many others are skeptical, and yes, even jealous of such unusual talent and ability in such a young artist.

I may look at this a bit differently. As the youngest of five children in a musical family, I was out playing professionally in bands and clubs at the age of fourteen. I frequently experienced ageism until folks could see what I could do. It happened again when I began teaching college in my early twenties with students near—and even beyond—my own age. I am still teaching college decades later, though one’s sense of temporality becomes suspended when every fall you’re blessedly renewed by interacting with young adults at the peak of their energy and curiosity.

What I experience in Klaus Mäkelä—and more importantly, what I see the players experiencing in him—is energy and curiosity. In no way is that meant in a condescending way. He is, by any measure, extraordinary. What happens when the extraordinary becomes a seasoned veteran? The mind boggles. Two more years and the journey begins.

CSO music director designate Klaus Mäkelä returns for four weeks during the 2025-26 season of one week each in October, December, February and March. The October all-Berlioz program includes “Harold in Italy” with French violist Antoine Tamestit and “Symphonie fantastique” (7:30pm October 16, 17, 18), cso.org.

Published in the print edition of the October 2025 issue.