Conductors Had One Job. Now They Have Three or Four
“I love my three orchestras,” the twenty-eight-year-old Finnish conductor Klaus Mäkelä said the other day on WQXR, during a broadcast from Carnegie Hall. Mäkelä was leading an all-Stravinsky concert with the Orchestre de Paris, of which he has been the music director since 2021. The other orchestras in question are the Oslo Philharmonic, which he has led since 2020, and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, where he holds the title of Artistic Partner. In 2027, Mäkelä will become the chief conductor of the Concertgebouw, which would appear on any shortlist of the world’s finest ensembles. No conductor in modern history, not even the lavishly hyped Gustavo Dudamel, has ever risen so quickly to the peak of the profession.And now there are four. The Chicago Symphony, arguably the supreme exempl...