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Mr. Mäkelä Paints Two Heros New York
Isaac Stern Auditorium, Carnegie Hall
02/25/2026 - & February 19, 20, 21, 2026 (Chicago)
Richard Strauss: Ein Heldenleben, Opus 40
Jean Sibelius: Lemminkäinen, Opus 22
Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Klaus Mäkelä (Conductor, Music Director Designate)
K. Mäkelä (© Todd Rosenberg/CSO Principal Photographer)
“The climax of everything that is ugly, cacophonous, blatant and erratic, the most perverse music I have ever heard, is Ein Heldenleben’s “Battlefield”. The man who wrote this is either a lunatic or he is rapidly approaching idiocy.”
The Musical Courier, 1899
“I’m not a hero: I am not made for combat. Yet I am no less interesting than Napoleon himself.”
Richard Strauss
Successful conductors are appropriately, inevitably an egotistical lot. But when the young musical director-conductor Klaus Mäkelä took on a pair of towering giants last night with his Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO), those musical characters’ ego would, relatedly turn conductors into humble menials.
Mr. Mäkelä took no opportunity to transform Jan Sibelius’ mythical hero Lemminkäinen or Richard Strauss’ autobiographical hero into subtle musical poems. Partly replicating CSO’s previous Music Director Riccardo Muti, and certainly using his own muscular talents, Mr. Mäkelä took both works into the sphere of the Wagnerian hero‑verse.
And it worked!
After all, the CSO has a character fitting the monumental. Lacking the utter perfection of the Cleveland orchestra or the frequent fireworks of our own Phil, the CSO can utter mammoth ear-blasting sounds when called for. And Mr. Mäkelä called for these sounds throughout the entire evening.
Heldenleben began with a crashing double‑bass sixteenth‑note a fraction before the cello‑bass heroic melody. The huge orchestral forces moved through that opening movement, sometimes lumbering (after all, Mr. Strauss, in his mid‑30’s had to prove his heroism for a good 45 minutes). But the strings of the CSO brought a ruthless excitement to the opening.
The “Hero Meets the Critics” was not a cartoon-like movement. Mr. Mäkelä turned the chattering woodwinds into the ugly jabbing the composer called for.
Where, though, was the tuba signal of Strauss’s nemesis, Dr. Schmidt? One could hardly hear this crucifixion! Not to worry. With their repetitions in further movements, that tuba became increasingly louder, giving emphasis to the Strauss vilification.
Concertmaster Robert Chen’s “Hero’s Lover” was low‑key, hardly as dramatic as needed. But his virtuosity could never be questioned.
For conductor Mäkelä, the centerpiece was not love, but war. And mystery. For instance, how did the brass player go off stage left–and the clarion calls come from stage right? Perhaps, along with a piccolo trumpet, Strauss invented a ventriloquist brass consort.
The other mysteries–which were as fiery and incandescent as Strauss could have made it–were the bellicose percussion clamors. The program lists a measly four percussion-timpani players. But they obviously multiplied like hamsters. I counted seven or eight players making as much wonderful noise as humanly possible, even those Carnegie Hall rising-falling lights trembling with fright.
A treasonous thought occurred after the work. What if–during the previous night’s State of the Union–instead of a hockey team, the whole CSO percussion section marched in, drumming, pounding, beating as loudly as they did last night! Timpanist David Herbert might have drowned out the verbal garbage from the podium.
(One can dream.)
After this apocalyptic movement, the last two sessions seemed relatively gentle. Though Mr. Mäkelä, as ever, was the balletic performer.
The following Sibelius Lemminkäinen, depicting the iconic Finnish hero, was premiered here two years before Heldenleben (1898), and Sibelius, the Finn de Siècle, gave the brash hero a more subtle writing. No brash war, but death, the Finnish replica of the River Styx, and the doomed Lemminkäinen himself was depicted.
Unlike the leitmotif-ridden Strauss, these four movements were like separate tone‑poems, the most famous of which was the English horn solo in The Swan of Tuonela. Scott Hostetler stood up for the movement, and worked his rare instrument with eloquence and deftness.
S. Hostetler/R. Chen (© Chicago Symphony Orchestra)
The only adjective to describe Mr. Mäkelä’s conducting was tension. From the first fluttering chordal horns followed by strings and clarinet, both conductor and composer transported us to the mythical land of heroes and immortality.
This Lemminkäinen was not the blatant Strauss autobiography. It was the opposite. A Wagnerian Valhalla without the Wagnerian unconcealed tragedy. Rather, both composer, and the conductor who grew up with this music, offered an exercise in taut, tight music‑making. The ending was hardly like Strauss’ ecstatic brass chords. Instead, Mr. Mäkelä finally allowed the breathless audience to gratefully breathe once again.
Harry Rolnick
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