The programme might have looked conventional on paper but there was nothing safe about Klaus Mäkelä’s debut with the London Symphony Orchestra. The 28-year-old Finn, who in 2027 will take on the top job at both the Royal Concertgebouw and Chicago Symphony Orchestra, gave a turbo-charged demonstration of what all the fuss is about, concluding with an earth-shattering account of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.
He opened on home turf with Sibelius’s Tapiola, a 20-minute evocation of the vast northern forests that ranks among the Finnish composer’s darkest utterances. Striding forth into the twilight with broad, confident gestures, Mäkelä swayed in time as woodlands thrashed and heaved, or crouched as if to brace himself against the musical onslaught. Physicality aside, this was an imaginative, rigorously crafted interpretation, which the orchestra conveyed in dazzling shades of grey – the tectonic rumble of the icy crescendo was overwhelming.
