The Concertgebouw Orchestra is delighted to announce a long-term engagement with Klaus Mäkelä, who will begin as artistic partner in the 2022/2023 season and will become the orchestra's eighth chief conductor in 2027.
As artistic partner, Klaus Mäkelä will work closely with the Concertgebouw Orchestra, beginning in August with concerts at Het Concertgebouw, the Philharmonie in Cologne and the Philharmonie in Berlin (opening concert of the Musikfest Berlin). During the 2022/2023 season, the Finnish conductor will lead the Concertgebouw Orchestra in five different programmes, after which the collaboration will develop naturally and the conductor and musicians will have the opportunity to spend more time together in the coming years both in Amsterdam and beyond.
Klaus Mäkelä and the Concertgebouw Orchestra
Klaus Mäkelä made his debut with the Concertgebouw Orchestra in September 2020, and from the first moment it was clear that this was a perfect match. Following this particularly convincing debut, the orchestra invited him twice more that same season. In the following season, he conducted the orchestra on tours to Hamburg and Reykjavík. Each time, the collective wish of the orchestra musicians to ask Klaus Mäkelä to be their new chief conductor was reaffirmed.
The Concertgebouw Orchestra has a strong tradition of long-term collaborations with conductors, including Willem Mengelberg, Bernard Haitink and Riccardo Chailly, from an early stage in their careers. With the appointment of Klaus Mäkelä as artistic partner for five seasons before he takes up his position as chief conductor, the orchestra embarks on a new journey that will bring many years of artistic highlights and new discoveries.
Klaus Mäkelä:
'This is an orchestra of exceptionally fine musicians with a shared curiosity and ambition to make music in the most compelling and communicative way possible. You only need to hear the sound of the Concertgebouw Orchestra once to admire it forever, and I am honoured to have the responsibility for preserving it and contributing to its future development. I am very grateful to the orchestra, staff and board for welcoming me with open arms, and I look forward to all the moments, on stage and beyond, that we will share in the coming years.'
You only need to hear the sound of the Concertgebouw Orchestra once to admire it forever.
Jörgen van Rijen:
solo trombonist, chairman of the Artistic Committee, board member:
'I am delighted that we can make this important announcement. I speak on behalf of all my colleagues in the orchestra when I say that we have chosen with all our hearts a long-term engagement with conductor Klaus Mäkelä. We have rarely experienced such overwhelming support from our musicians for a future chief conductor. For us, Klaus is a musician among musicians, and a conducting talent like you encounter only once in a generation. With his thorough understanding of and command over a broad repertoire, and his inspiring artistic vision and energy, Klaus brings out the best in us.
We have rarely experienced such overwhelming support from our musicians for a future chief conductor.
One of the great aspects of the Concertgebouw Orchestra is that the musicians themselves are closely involved in the artistic direction of the organization, and they themselves decide who their new chief conductor will be. I am proud of all my colleagues, who together have set up the search process for the new chief conductor and have shown so much patience during the wait for the right candidate. We are completely convinced that we have found the perfect match for the Concertgebouw Orchestra and cannot wait to begin our shared musical journey.'
The management team of the Concertgebouw Orchestra:
'We are pleased to announce that Klaus Mäkelä has signed a ten-year contract with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, providing for a long-term collaboration with our orchestra. We respect Klaus' current positions with the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra and the Orchestre de Paris, with whom we have an excellent relationship, and appoint him as artistic partner from the 2022/2023 season before he begins as eighth chief conductor of the Concertgebouw Orchestra in 2027. This agreement demonstrates the great commitment and trust between our musicians and Klaus and will ensure the preservation of the musical top quality that audiences worldwide expect from our orchestra. We look forward to working with Klaus, whose tenure in the coming years will underscore the orchestra's reputation as one of the leading symphony orchestras in the world.'
- Managing Director Dominik Winterling
- Artistic Director Ulrike Niehoff
- Director of Operations David Bazen
About Klaus Mäkelä
Klaus Mäkelä is chief conductor of the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, music director of the Orchestre de Paris and artistic director of the Turku Music Festival. In the 2022/2023 season, he makes his debut as guest conductor with the New York Philharmonic, the Berliner Philharmoniker and the Leipziger Gewandhausorchester and returns to the United States for concerts with The Cleveland Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Klaus Mäkelä has an exclusive contract with Decca Classics. As his first project for the label, he recorded the complete cycle of Sibelius' symphonies with the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, which was released in March 2022.