Klaus Mäkelä
Each month, our arts critics — music, book, theater, dance, television, film, and visual arts — fire off a few brief reviews.
The performances on the recording exhibit no conception of Shostakovich’s style – where is this music’s irony and sarcasm, let alone pathos? – not to mention any sense of how to navigate large-scale forms.
Conductor Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony deliver a conspicuously satisfying and fluent Bruckner Seventh. Dutch violinist Janine Jansen also possesses an uncommon ability to enliven the familiar.
Some solidly impressive Mozart — aside from the filler, fifteen minutes of mono-dynamic, schlocky medleys.
While one is willing to grant a 27-year-old conductor some benefit of the doubt, there’s little here to suggest that the Great Nordic Hope of Classical Music isn’t simply out of his depth.
Conductor Klaus Mäkelä may be young, but, on the merits of this set, he sure seems to be the real deal. Buckle up: this ought to be an exciting career.
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