The Cologne Philharmonie is one of the most remarkable concert halls in our region. Together with the Museum Ludwig, it was designed by architects Busman and Haberer and opened in 1986. It stands in the heart of Cologne, close to the cathedral and central station. The modern amphitheater, where the audience sits around the stage, seats more than 2,000 listeners. It has two resident orchestras (Gürzenich and WDR orchestras), but it is especially the big names and orchestras that are guests season after season and draw audiences.
Rising Star
On Friday, August 22, there was the opening concert of the 2025/26 season of the Cologne Philharmonie. I came especially to hear and see the young conductor Klaus Mäkelä at work live. At this concert, he conducts the Amsterdam Concertgebouworkest in Mozart's Paris Symphony (the 31st) and Béla Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra. Dutch star violinist Janine Jansen is the soloist in Sergei Prokofiev's first violin concerto.Conductor Klaus Mäkelä has broken through like a comet in recent years. Just five years ago, at age 24, he was appointed as chief of the Oslo Philharmonic. After that, things moved incredibly fast. He was already guest conductor and partner of many world-renowned orchestras. In 2027, he will become the new chief conductor of both the Concertgebouworkest and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. In 2027, he will only be 31 years old. It is exceptional that an orchestra with as long a tradition as Amsterdam's Concertgebouw appoints such a young conductor as its new chief.
Young God
What makes someone a top conductor? With Mäkelä, it's not decades of experience. Conducting is communication and persuasiveness, and of course a conductor must know the score inside out. At the Concertgebouw, it is especially the musicians themselves who want him as their new chief. He also comes from a musical family and was actually on his way to building a solo career as a cellist. As a conductor too, he remains a musician among musicians. As a young god, Mäkelä is of course also marketed in classical music management like a fashion model.
Mozart wrote his Paris Symphony in 1778 on commission from the Paris Concerts Spirituels, one of the first public concert societies. For the Parisian audience, it had to be entertaining and make a lot of noise. From the very first chords, the hall is filled with the rich sound of the Concertgebouworkest, with the Berlin and Vienna orchestras being among the best in the world. They could probably do this without a conductor, but Mäkelä does add some surprising accents and nuances.
Masterful
Masterful
Dutch violinist Janine Jansen has been at the top for nearly two decades. She also recorded Prokofiev's first violin concerto with Mäkelä and his Oslo Philharmonic. She plays beautifully dreamy and pleading in the first movement, fiery and frenzied in the second. I worried Jansen might come across as perhaps too expressive and dramatic, but here everything was in perfect balance in a masterful performance.
Béla Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra is one of the most remarkable orchestral masterworks of the twentieth century. He was already ill, suffering from leukemia when he received the commission from Serge Koussevitsky to write an orchestral work. His last great work is not a symphony but a concerto, in which he lets groups of instruments in the orchestra perform alongside each other. Virtually everything Bartók is known for is in it: irregular rhythms, mysterious night music, rousing motifs, and so on. Mäkelä and the Concertgebouw Orchestra make something truly grand of it.
Golden Sound
Here and there I also noticed something I've never heard in other performances of Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra. At the reprise of the theme in the bassoons in the second movement (from measure 165), the conductor lets the third bassoon not accompany but become the main line. On the other hand, the nervous accents of the viola, cello, and bass (from measure 57) in that same section were barely audible. Their off-beat rhythms (accent on the second sixteenth of the measure) are a kind of nerve ending in that section, but it hardly came through. In the fourth movement, the oboe solo sounded rather dragging, and the overall tempo of that section lacked tightness.
Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam conducted by Klaus Mäkelä, soloist Janine Jansen
