Delno young – Newspaper Kommersant No. 159 (7360) dated 08/31/2022

Musikfest Berlin, one of the largest European classical music festivals, has started in the German capital. It traditionally marks the start of the season at the Berlin Philharmonic, composing its imposing menu of performances by top-class orchestras, moderately set off by oases of chamber music, predominantly new and avant-garde. Attended the opening Gular Sadykh-zade.

This year the honor of opening the festival went to the Dutch Royal Orchestra Concertgebouw. Behind the conductor’s stand was 26-year-old Finnish conductor Klaus Mäkelä. The one about whom – so far in an undertone – they say: “He is a genius.”

Mäkelä quickly and confidently makes a truly sky-high career. He currently leads the Oslo Symphony Orchestra and the Orchester de Paris. Since 2022, he has become a permanent artistic partner of the Concertgebouw Orchestra. And from 2027 he will become a full-fledged chief conductor of the Netherlands orchestra, continuing the work of Willem Kees, Willem Mengelberg, Felix Weingarten, Eduard van Beinum, Bernard Haitink, Mariss Jansons and, for a short period in the history of the orchestra, Daniele Gatti. The orchestra is proud of the fact that during the entire period of its existence, only seven maestros have been replaced as chief conductor – and all of them were great. Mäkelä will be eighth.

Grasp, charisma, will, pressure: as it turned out, the young maestro, a student of the legendary Jorma Panula, knew exactly what he wanted from the orchestra and how Mahler should sound. Enviable self-confidence delighted, and the reading of Mahler’s score surprised with maturity, precision and uncompromisingness. It was unimaginable: it seemed that a young man of 26 years old could not be so deeply imbued with the tragedy of the Sixth Symphony with all the hopelessness of its novelistic plot.

There seemed to be something Bernsteinian in the manner of conducting the fragile young man: over time, who knows, Mäkelya will grow into a new Bernstein – he thinks on a large scale, in large blocks, feeling the powerful breath of an extended cyclopean form. He completely etched the typically Mahlerian romantic exaltation and sentimental lace from the score. And he offered the audience an unusual Mahler, inscribed in the context of the 21st century – the century of cruel and unpredictable.

Mahler’s sixth symphony is called “Tragic”, although this is not an official title. In any case, Mahler did not give it, but he did not mind when his friends called the symphony that way: of course, he had some kind of internal program for the opus, but he did not consider it necessary to make it public. The symphony was written in the summer, on vacation in the Alps in the town of Mayernig, when everything seemed to be more than successful in the life of Mahler and his family: he was successful both as a conductor at the Vienna Opera and as a composer. And yet it is difficult to get rid of the feeling that the music of the Sixth already portends future misfortunes – the death of the eldest daughter, the incurable illness of Mahler himself, the war. The hero of the symphony perishes, his spirit is crushed under the onslaught of terrible forces, and the deafening final chord that collapses after a few moments of fragile silence sounds like the collapse of the entire universe.

Myakelya sharpened to the extreme and emphasized the frighteningly aggressive marching style in the first part. Chton was advancing on the hall, it seemed as if, chasing a step, black regiments were marching, caterpillars of tanks were crawling behind them. The tremolo sounded ominously; crushing blows of the cyclopean hammer fell, crushing all hope.

At the same time, Mäkelä chose an unusual sequence of parts, rearranging Andante and Scherzo. This is how Mahler himself performed the symphony, but such a rearrangement fit into the conductor’s conception quite logically: after a brief lyrical respite with the distant tinkling of cow bells, the gloomy scherzo was perceived as a harbinger of an inevitable catastrophe.

However, the concert was opened not by Mahler, but by Kaya Saariaho’s symphonic triptych Orion. The conjugation of Finnish names in the concert poster was predictable: Finnish conductors take the promotion of Russian music seriously and never miss an opportunity to perform Finnish authors. Orion was commissioned by the Cleveland Orchestra in 2002, shortly after the resounding success of Caia Saariajo’s first opera, L’Amour de Loin (Love from afar), first staged at the Salzburg Festival and at the Santa Fe Theatre. Three parts – “Memento mori” (“Remember death”), “Winter Sky” and “Hunter” – in terms of tempo ratios have developed almost into a symphonic cycle. The unsteady haze of sound matter in the first part swirled, shimmered and curled like stellar spirals in the blackness of space; it was a picture of the celestial Orion – a mythical hunter, raised by Zeus to heaven. The ascending sound streams became denser, the dynamics sublimated, a single dynamic wave at the point of the golden section culminated in a powerful climax with the entry of the organ into the orchestral mass of tutti. The dramaturgy of the first part was somewhat predictable, but the music is still very beautiful. Saariaho is a great craftswoman of weaving airy, smoky sound canvases; she learned this in her time in Paris, learning the secrets of spectral music. The second, thoughtfully-meditative part captivated the ear with skilful roll-calls — interweaving of woodwind solos, delicate flute frullato.

The third part – “The Hunter”, a violent fiery scherzo – depicted the earthly appearance of the handsome giant Orion and his deeds. The element of the game here came into its own; ringing sounds, unrestrained pressure, energy of action – such was the “earthly” part of the triptych. Together with the conjugation of the cosmos and the elements, nature and mythology, as it turned out, both the intricacy of the idea and the skillfulness of the incarnation successfully converged in the puzzle.