Since 2020 the young Finnish conductor Klaus Mäkelä is chief conductor of the Oslo Philharmonic, and since 2021 he is music director of the Orchestre de Paris. He is also the current artistic partner of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and in 2027 he will take up the position of chief conductor with this orchestra, and, at the same time, that of music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Following his debut at the 2024 Salzburg Festival with the Oslo Philharmonic performing Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony, this composer has also been a focus of his 2024/25 season with the orchestra. Other programme highlights have included Andrew Norman’s Play, Anders Hillborg’s Second Piano Concerto with Emanuel Ax and Sibelius’s Lemminkäinen Suite.
The focus of his fourth season with the Orchestre de Paris has been on French composers: he has paid tribute to the anniversaries of Ravel and Boulez, performing their works alongside ones by Berlioz, Fauré, Debussy and Poulenc, Charlotte Bray’s A Sky Too Small and the world premiere of Thierry Escaich’s commissioned work Lux Aeterna.
In the 2024/25 season guest engagements have taken him to the London Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra and the Berlin Philharmonic, and to make his debut with the Vienna Philharmonic. He was also an artist in focus at the Vienna Musikverein and the subject of artist portraits at the Essen Philharmonie and at Bozar in Brussels. As chief conductor designate, he returned to the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra to conduct a traditional Christmas matinee, and Mahler’s First Symphony and his Eighth Symphony as part of the Concertgebouw’s Mahler Festival. He also performed a new work by the Pulitzer prize-winner Ellen Reid with the orchestra on tour in the USA.
As a cellist, Klaus Mäkelä is a regular guest at the Verbier Festival, and gives chamber music recitals with members of the orchestras in Oslo, Paris and Amsterdam.
As an exclusive recording artist with Decca Classics, he has recorded Stravinsky’s The Firebird and The Rite of Spring with the Orchestre de Paris and the complete symphonies of Jean Sibelius with the Oslo Philharmonic. Most recently he released an album of Sibelius’s Violin Concerto and Prokofiev’s First Violin Concerto with Janine Jansen in June 2024; and in August, he released a recording of Shostakovich’s Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Symphonies.
Klaus Mäkelä was awarded an OPUS Klassik as ‘Conductor of the Year’ in autumn 2024.
