Here was something truly special: a conductor who revelled in freshly imagining each sound.

The Times
Official Biography

Klaus Mäkelä has held the position of Chief Conductor of the Oslo Philharmonic since 2020 and Music Director of Orchestre de Paris since 2021. As Artistic Partner to the Concertgebouworkest since 2022 he will assume the title of Chief Conductor in 2027. An exclusive Decca Classics Artist, he has recorded the complete Sibelius Symphony cycle with the Oslo Philharmonic and Stravinsky’s Firebird and The Rite of Spring with Orchestre de Paris.

Following residencies with the Oslo Philharmonic at the Edinburgh and Lucerne festivals in August, Klaus Mäkelä opens his fourth season as Chief Conductor with Thomas Larcher’s Symphony No.2 and Mahler’s Symphony No.4. The 2023/24 includes seventeen concerts at home in Norway a three week tour of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan and guest performances in Hamburg, Amsterdam, Paris and Vienna. Programme highlights include Shostakovich’s Symphony No.7, Bartok’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle and Brahms’ Double Concerto, in which Mäkelä conducts and plays cello alongside violinist Daniel Lozakovich.

With Orchestre de Paris, Klaus Mäkelä performed Stravinsky’s Ballet Russes at the Festival d’Aix on Provence in a special collaboration with three film makers. Ballet Russes continues as a main focus of Mäkelä’s third season in Paris, including performances and a recording of Stravinsky’s Petrushka, Debussy’s Jeux and L’Après-midi d’un faune for Decca Classics. 2023/24 is also a season of pianists, featuring Bertrand Chamayou, Yuja Wang, Leif Ove Andnses, Danill Trifonov, Alexandre Kantorow and Lang Lang in repertoire ranging from Prokofiev and Rachmaninov to Ravel, Chopin and Saint-Saens. Additional highlights include world premieres by Unsuk Chin and Anna Thorvaldsdottir and the French premiere of Miroslav Srnka’s Superorganisms.

Mäkelä often compares the programming of concerts to curating exhibitions and he takes this literally with one of the six programmes he leads in his second season as Artistic Partner to the Concergetbouworkest. Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition is partnered with de Falla’s Nights in the Gardens of Spain and Hawar Tawfiq’s M.C. Escher’s Imagination. Additional programmes include the pairing of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto with works by Betsy Jolas and Thomas Larcher and Beethoven’s Symphony No.3 with music by Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn. Mäkelä also leads the orchestra in performances of Mahler’s Symphony No.3 and Bruckner’s Symphony No.5, as part of a complete cycle celebrating the 200th anniversary of the composer’s birth.

Klaus Mäkelä guest conducts three orchestras in the 2023/24 season, returning to the US to lead The Cleveland Orchestra and Chicago Symphony Orchestra and to Germany for three performances with Munich Philharmonic.

As a cellist Mäkelä partners with members of the Oslo Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris and Concertgebouworkest for occasional programmes and each summer performs at the Verbier Festival in chamber music concerts with fellow artists.

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Upcoming Performances

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Chicago, United States

Symphony Center

Chicago Symphony Orchestra

Sauli Zinovjev: Batteria
Bella Bartok: Piano Concerto No. 2
Dmitri Shostakovich: Symphony No. 10

Soloist: Yuja Wang

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Cleveland, United States

Severance Music Center

Cleveland Orchestra

Jimmy López Bellido: Perú negro
Edward Elgar: Cello Concerto
William Walton: Belshazzar’s Feast

Soloists: Sol Gabetta (cello), Thomas Hampson (baritone)

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Cleveland, Unites States

Severance Music Center

Cleveland Orchestra

Maurice Ravel: Piano Concerto for the Left Hand
Igor Stravinsky: Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments
Igor Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring

Soloist: Yuja Wang

INFO

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ORCHESTRE DE PARIS ANNOUNCES 2024/25 SEASON

Hot off the heels of the critically accliamed tour to the States and Canada, the Orchestre de Paris has announced the programme for it's fourth season with Klaus Mäkelä. With a focus on French composers and new works, the 2024 / 25 season pays tribute to the anniversaries of both Ravel and Boulez and features music by Berlioz, Fauré, Debussy, {…}

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2024/25 FOCUS ARTIST AT VIENNA MUSIKVEREIN

Vienna's Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde has announced Klaus Mäkelä as a Focus Artist of the 2024/25 season. Between October and March Mäkelä will conduct 6 concerts, including his first appearances with the Vienna Philharmonic (two performances on 13 December) and guest performances with the Oslo Philharmonic (30 October), Orchestre de Paris {…}

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Acclaims & Features

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Reviews  |  

Ballets Russes album review – Gramophone

Petrushka comes home. To Paris if not the Théâtre du Châtelet. Following on from Klaus Mäkelä’s handsome coupling of Stravinsky’s Rite and Firebird ballets (5/23) the headline feature of this terrific Petrushka is characterisation. It’s a performance full of animation and incident and from the Orchestre de Paris and their impressive line-up of wind soloists a {…}
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Orchestre de Paris – North America & Canada tour

"Mäkelä and the players fed off each other’s energy to produce a performance that one hopes was as breathtaking for them to play as it was for the audience to hear … The shattering end of the Rite brought the audience instantly to its feet - in recognition, one hoped, as much of musical history brought to life as of the achievement of these immensely accomplished visitors from {…}
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Orchestre de Paris

" A dazzling concert presenting the 3 great ballets of 1909-1913 by Igor Stravinsky, Firebird, Petrushka and The Rite of Spring, a dream I'd always had of hearing all three in the same concert, and with the quality of performance offered this evening ... gorging myself on the constantly renewed hectic rhythms, the fabulous gleam of the timbres, the impressive instrumental velocity, the {…}

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Chief Conductor & Artistic Advisor

   Music Director & Artistic Director

                  Artistic Partner
     Chief Conductor (from 2027/28)