A plain fan’s guide to Finnish conductors

A plain fan’s guide to Finnish conductors

News

norman lebrecht

June 02, 2024

From my new essay in The Critic:

The biggest noise to be heard in orchestral music is not the click and whirr of audience smartphones shooting TikTok clips in the slow movement. Nor is it the straining of CEOs shoving diversity, inclusion and equity monitors onto the payroll.

No, folks, the really big noise in symphony halls is a beanpole Finn who finds himself, aged 28, at the head of four major orchestras, two of them world-beaters. Now, how the Helsinki did that happen?…

Read on here.

Comments

  • Cynical Bystander says:

    Scottish Conductors – Garry Walker at Opera North. Donald Runnicles at everywhere but anywhere in the UK.

  • Hugh says:

    It makes little sense for a young star like Makela to dilute his brand by association with the CSO, an orchestra that has been getting very mixed reviews after the Muti years. He should have gone to LA or New York, or Cleveland

    • chet says:

      don’t be jealous

      he should’ve gone to LA or NY? well, he should’ve dated Buniatishvili, but the other party has to show some interest in hooking up too

  • Willym says:

    Other than this site can you give examples as to where it has become the biggest “noise” in classical music?

  • Robin Mitchell-Boyask says:

    Salonen’s recent 2 weeks in Philadelphia were absolutely phenomenal, certainly the richest music-making here since Rattle used to come regularly, visits which were only bettered by Tennstedt before him. He is my favorite living musician. I wish we’d hear the other Finns more regularly!

  • Guest says:

    > As Yuja sulked, Mäkelä wore a feline smile. He jumped three rungs on the celebrity scale.

    It’s not just this. In 2019 Muti got 1.5 mil as his MD base salary. Mäkelä gets the same. Muti got another 1.8 mil for his performances as an independent contractor. No doubt Mäkelä will get a similar amount. That is 3 mil plus in total.

    So Mäkelä negotiated an extremely high salary using his partner’s past history with the CSO as leverage behind her back (“she won’t agree to it because you treated her with contempt, so if you want me to come you have to pay me extra”), and then pocketed the money and dumped her. Not bad, not bad.

    Now apparently his mentor Salonen wants to use Yuja Wang to sell concerts of unpalatable modern music, so he told Alex Ross to write how her fashion draws audience out of the comfort zone. Ross insinuates in the same article that he doesn’t think Yuja is as good a pianist as Igor Levit or Stephen Hough, both of whom are in his opinion as good at “sultry Romantic repertory” as everything else they play. The article is written like this to: 1. make Yuja appear as a legitimate musician to the “serious” audience Salonen wants to attact, even though a case can be made that her current image as a pianist more known for her style than playing was constructed by Ross and his colleagues (they, not Yuja, have control over what is written in the press) because they want to protect their own; 2. pigeonhole Yuja so that she plays as much modern music as possible.

    In other words, Finnish conductors appear to be expert networkers who ruthlessly take advantage of people useful to them to achieve their own ends.

    • chet says:

      What were you smoking when you wrote this?

      • Guest says:

        I have a bridge to sell you if you don’t think Yuja’s past history with the CSO was not at the back of their mind when they negotiated the salary. This was what made this deal so unbelievable in the first place until the reveal.

    • mk says:

      Contrary to popular belief, cynicism isn’t a sign of superior intelligence.

    • Eda says:

      WOW! You make the scientific world with which I am much more familiar look like a cage of kittens.

  • J Barcelo says:

    Why all the angst about these young conductors? Is it that they’re not ready for the great orchestras? Most of the legendary conductors of the past had significant posts in their 20s. No one seems alarmed by kids who are superstars in athletics, acting, coding, or even composing. Gerard Schwarz was playing trumpet with New York in the Boulez era at age 18. Rather than all this clutching of pearls, critics of these youngsters need to take heed of a quote from Arthur C. Clarke: The old are often very jealous of the young.

  • HSY says:

    I find it suspect that Finland has produced so many conductors in top positions but no great pianists. Usually these two go hand in hand.

    • Jan says:

      It probably means these conductors are not real Finns, or they are killing all the pianists in covert black ops.

    • Ex-Orchestra says:

      Siirala is a fantastic Finnish pianist. But why does a conductor need to be a great pianist?

    • Eda says:

      The Australian Chamber Orchestra has an excellent cellist. And a violinist married to Richard Tognetti.

  • Andreas C. says:

    It’s because the conducting mafia hijacks all promising young Finnish instrumentalists and molds them into conductors. But there are still some names worth mentioning, like Laura Mikkola and Joonas Ahonen.

  • chet says:

    I don’t understand Makela’s fashion sense, he always wears this Ralph Kramden bus driver jacket (as in the photo), like one day he’ll morph into Jackie Gleason, I always picture him saying “‘One of these days, Yuja, pow, right in the kisser”

  • Michael says:

    …he is no Muti…the CSO is looking for a direction…possibly get rid of tenue and start working for your pay…

  • Mock Mahler says:

    I notice with interest that Peltokoski was recently trashed by a slash-and-burn classical critic; here, he’s highly praised.

    Physicians, heal thyselves.

  • mk says:

    He is not the “head of four major orchestras” at age 28. He is the head of two orchestras at age 28. And he will be the head of two different orchestras at age 31. It would be so easy to stop writing nonsense if you just bothered with facts.

  • Windy City says:

    I think this is a better understanding of the Finnish school in this article that has gone viral. My colleagues at the Chicago Symphony shared this with me. Time will tell about Mäkelä but as he has it all in his hands, let’s just hope he doesn’t burnout, which I think is far more likely than a seasoned conductor like Muti. https://johnaxelrod.substack.com/p/is-makela-really-that-good

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