Klaus Mäkelä knows his history.
Though a frisson of newness seems to surround the Chicago Symphony music director designate — he turned 30 last month — the conductor is, in many ways, pretty old-school. He geeks out on CSO tradition and discography and often prefers vintage recordings to modern ones.
Mäkelä has mostly discussed that vantage point in interviews. This week, it finds musical expression in a double-barreled program of symphonic epics — both about heroes, and both given early, influential U.S. premieres by the CSO — that he and the orchestra will soon bring to Carnegie Hall in New York.
While Mäkelä’s countryman, Jean Sibelius, turned to Finnish folklore for his “Lemminkäinen” suite, German composer and conductor Richard Strauss had the audacity to look to his own life while composing his tone poem “Ein Heldenleben,” or “A Hero’s Life.” The “hero’s” battles are banal — a bad review, a squabble with his wife — but Strauss’s music blows them up to mythic proportions. And why not?
Mäkelä took “Heldenleben’s” drama and cranked the dial as far as it could go. The violent clash at its climax was visceral and terrifying, like we, too, had been chucked into the fray. Likewise, the chorus of “critics” before it was extra cacophonous, each voice in the woodwind chorus sounding with its own distinctive sneer.
If we’re talking CSO history and sound, this was absolutely a Strauss tone poem in the Reiner manner, maximalist and painted in primary colors. But while Reiner’s “Heldenleben” prizes precision and flow — sounding of a piece with itself — Mäkelä’s emphasized narrative, embracing the grit and contradictions that make up a life.
He more or less ceded the floor for the piece’s famous violin solo, which CSO concertmaster Robert Chen realized with special abandon and sardonic wit. The afterglow following that solo was uncommonly tender, as was “The Hero’s Works of Peace,” in which snippets of Strauss’s other pieces float by in a dreamy montage. When the critics’ voices returned during the peaceful “Hero’s Companion,” they did so ever so slowly and quietly, like unbidden memories drifting by in the moments just before falling asleep.
That said, both tone poems took some time to ripen. Like October’s “Symphonie fantastique,” the opening charge of “Heldenleben” was, somehow, too boldface and sometimes messy, leaving instrumental parts competing for attention.
The introduction to “Lemminkäinen” suffered more acutely. Two gleaming, ethereal horn chords open the work; live, they were piercing and questionably tuned. The rest of that first tone poem, “Lemminkäinen and the Maidens of Saari,” reflected that unsettled quality, coming off as antsy rather than atmospheric.
“The Swan of Tuonela” — placed second in the suite for these concerts, as has become conventional — was a total reset. Mäkelä has conducted this excerpt with the CSO before, during electrifying 2023 concerts with the orchestra.
Thursday’s reunion reflected that experience and deepened it. This “Swan” seemed to grow out of English hornist Scott Hostetler’s long, searching lines rather than the reverse. Where Hostetler went, emotionally and musically, the CSO followed, then amplified it. (Fittingly for that interpretive reorientation, Mäkelä had Hostetler stand for his solo this time.)
It only got better and better from there. The third poem, “Lemminkäinen in Tuonela,” is the least popular as a standalone excerpt — baffling, since it’s both the heart of the Lemminkäinen tale and exquisitely structured. In it, Lemminkäinen is torn to pieces and thrown into the Finnish equivalent of the River Styx. His mother collects his remains from the current to stitch him back together, piece by piece.
The opening string tremolos balanced clarity and opacity — shapes scurrying in the darkness, but distinct shapes nonetheless. A jagged four-note refrain repeats with mounting desperation, like calling a name into the void; Mäkelä and the CSO made these sound hauntingly vulnerable on Thursday.
The interlude which follows, with Lemminkäinen being reconstituted, balanced a certain whimsy and mystery against the ominous, hurdy-gurdy drone of the orchestra’s lower voices — muted in some interpretations, but foregrounded here. It reminded one of what the Berlin Philharmonic does exceptionally well, which is convey two emotions at once. In this reading, the despair of Lemminkäinen’s death and the miracle of his resurrection were inextricably twinned.
If there’s any section that runs the risk of coming undone, it’s the testosterone-fueled “Lemminkäinen’s Return” at piece’s end. No worries here. Mäkelä’s tempo was zippy but tight, with the same delineated lines that gave the beginning of “Lemminkäinen in Tuonela” its thrill.
In the heady final stretch, galloping cellos and basses, beating their bows against the strings, carry young Lemminkäinen home, back from his trials and better for it. A hero’s return, indeed.
Program repeats 7:30 p.m Feb. 20-21 at Symphony Center, 220 S. Michigan Ave.; $69-$399 at 312-294-3000 and cso.org
Hannah Edgar is a freelance critic.
