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Stravinsky — Pétrouchka / Debussy — Jeux & Prélude à l’Après-midi d’un faune (Decca Classics)
★★★★☆/★★★☆☆
The Finnish conductor Klaus Mäkelä, simply 28 years outdated, is the most well liked property on the circuit although nonetheless unrecognised past the orchestra fishbowl. Mäkelä is presently music director in Oslo, Paris and Amsterdam. He’s additionally (I hear) about to be named chief conductor in Chicago. How he balances all these jobs is anybody’s guess.
Off stage, he has simply ended a six-month relationship with the pianist Yuja Wang. The pair have live performance bookings collectively for the following three years. That might be difficult in the case of eye contact. Overlook what they burble on the radio: classical music and romance don’t go collectively.
The good query is what the lanky Finn brings to the social gathering. His musicianship is lithe and versatile and he appears to have acquired the transactional expertise to make an orchestra stroll by way of fireplace behind him. His interpretations, nevertheless, have been inconsistent, unoriginal and at occasions superficial. An Oslo set of Sibelius symphonies verged on anonymity. A Stravinsky Ceremony of Spring in Paris handed muster by the pores and skin of its almond blossoms.
Right here, Mäkelä and Paris carry out Petrushka with arresting outcomes. There may be devilment within the element and the next part of Ceremony-like savagery than I’ve ever heard earlier than on this rating. The Paris woodwinds play with skin-tingling precision and the pianist Bertrand Chamayou chips in with a playfulness that’s merely irresistible. Petrushka positively sparkles.
Two Debussy items much less so. The ‘dance poem’ Jeux barely lifts its heels off the ground and the Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune isn’t a lot dreamy as positively soporific. The French orchestra can, after all, play these items of their sleep. However that’s not what they need to be doing on a file. This conductor wants to save lots of his naps for the airplane.
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Anya Wassenberg is a Toronto Metropolis Editor at Ludwig Van. She is an skilled freelance author, blogger and writing teacher.
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