Klaus Mäkelä named to head Chicago Symphony Orchestra

[jserraglio]

Klaus Mäkelä, 28-Year-Old Finnish Conductor, to Lead Chicago Symphony

He will be the youngest music director in the orchestra’s 133-year history, and one of the youngest ever to lead a top American ensemble.

Image
A young man in black pants and a checked jacket leans into a window frame. A city skyline is in the reflection of the window.

The conductor Klaus Mäkelä, 28. In 2027 he will become the youngest music conductor in the storied history of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.Credit...Vincent Tullo for

The New York Times
By Javier C. Hernández
April 2, 2024, 11:15 a.m. ET

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, which has been led for decades by conducting titans including Georg Solti, Daniel Barenboim and Riccardo Muti, announced Tuesday that its next music director would be Klaus Mäkelä, a 28-year-old Finnish conductor whose charisma and clarity have fueled his rapid rise in classical music.

When he begins a five-year contract in 2027 at 31, Mäkelä will be the youngest maestro in the ensemble’s 133-year history, and one of the youngest ever to lead a top orchestra in the United States.

Mäkelä, who will become music director designate immediately, said in an interview that he did not think his age was relevant, noting that he had been conducting for more than half his life, beginning when he was 12.

“I don’t think about it,” he said. “Music doesn’t really have any age.”

Mäkelä, who will also take over as chief conductor of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam in 2027, said he was joining the Chicago Symphony because it has “that intensity — that same sound from the past.”

“You felt as if anything you would ask, they could actually improve and do more,” he said, recalling his recent guest appearances there. “For a conductor, that is a very, very special feeling because you see that there really are no limits to what you can achieve.”

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A young conductor in formal wear with a large bow tie has both arms up conducting. He has a baton in his hand and a grin on his face. In the foreground we see string players.
Mäkelä making his debut conducting the New York Philharmonic in December 2022.Credit...Chris Lee

Mäkelä will be in Chicago this week conducting the orchestra. He was set to appear with the star pianist Yuja Wang, with whom he was in a relationship until recently. The two were a classical music power couple who sometimes performed together. Wang withdrew from the concerts last week without giving a reason. She will be replaced by the cellist Sol Gabetta.

Jeff Alexander, the Chicago Symphony’s president, said in an interview that Mäkelä’s connection with the musicians was palpable from their first few minutes rehearing together in 2022, preparing a program of Prokofiev, Stravinsky and Hillborg.

The orchestra’s leaders soon began tracking Mäkelä, secretly attending his performances in New York, San Francisco, Tokyo and Oslo. They formally offered him the job in February 2023 when he returned for a program of Mahler, Sibelius and López Bellido.

“Every experience,” Alexander said, “started to reconfirm our initial feeling that this really could be a special new relationship.”

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Mäkelä, one of the industry’s most in-demand conductors, already leads the Oslo Philharmonic and Orchestre de Paris. He said he would step down from those ensembles when his contracts expire in 2027 so that he could focus on the orchestras in Chicago and Amsterdam.

Mäkelä’s appointment will bring a generational shift to Chicago: He succeeds Muti, 82, the veteran maestro who led the Chicago Symphony from 2010 to 2023 before becoming music director emeritus for life.

The Chicago Symphony, with an endowment of $385 million, is one of the wealthiest and most celebrated in the United States. But it faces challenges, including lingering financial pain from the pandemic, rising costs and a long, gradual decline in subscriptions, which had once provided a lucrative source of revenue. Attendance at concerts is still below prepandemic levels — about 79 percent this season compared with 83 percent — though it has been steadily rising.

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A young man wearing a white shirt and white sneakers sits on a wooden floor while leaning against a mirrored wall that shows his reflection.
Mäkelä said he was joining the Chicago Symphony because it has “that intensity — that same sound from the past.”Credit...Vincent Tullo for The New York Times
The orchestra hopes that Mäkelä can help attract new audiences to classical music, including younger concertgoers.

“There is nothing wrong with old people,” Mäkelä said. “But of course, ideally, we would have a very wide-ranging diverse audience.”

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During his tenure, Mäkelä said he hoped to tackle standard repertoire like Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony and Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, as well as less commonly performed works like Monteverdi’s “Vespro della Beata Vergine” and William Walton’s choral work “Belshazzar’s Feast.”

He also said he would make commissioning new pieces a priority, naming Unsuk Chin, Thomas Larcher, Andrew Norman and Anna Thorvaldsdottir as some of his favorite contemporary composers.

“I feel that we can have a completely new chapter for the orchestra in terms of repertoire, in terms of developing the same amazing sound,” he said, “but having it as flexible as possible.”

The Chicago Symphony is also working to bring more women and people of color into the ensemble. The orchestra has 59 men and 34 women, and only a few Black and Latino members.

Because the pandemic delayed auditions, the orchestra has an unusually high number of vacancies, 15, which Mäkelä said was an “opportunity for change.” He will start weighing in on auditions immediately, the orchestra said.

Mäkelä, who trained at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, said some of his models were Esa-Pekka Salonen, a fellow Finn who recently announced he was stepping down from the San Francisco Symphony, pointing to his experiments with music and technology. And he expressed admiration for Kirill Petrenko, the chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, saying he had shown courage in programming.

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This week’s concerts will be Mäkelä’s third visit to Chicago. He said he liked the city’s art, architecture and food and did not fear its formidable winter season.

“I’m not terrified of the weather, being Finnish,” he said. “It seems pretty cozy.”

[Rach3]

Has any other chief conductor/music director held 2 such prestigious orchestral positions simultaneously ?

[Febnyc]

Has any other chief conductor/music director held 2 such prestigious orchestral positions simultaneously ?

Did James Levine lead the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and the BSO at the same time?

Perhaps the Met is not in the same class as the CSO and Concertgebouw - but, also, Levine was not a rookie as is Mäkelä, who made it to the big leagues in a hurry.

[Febnyc]

From a friend:

There have been others who hold two prestigious positions at the same time, but no one that young and unproven. Right now Yannick Nezet-Seguin is Director of the MET Opera and the Philadelphia Orchestra. Barenboim was Director of Chicago and the Berlin Opera, Maazel was Director of the Vienna State Opera and the Orchestre National de France. Masur was Director of the NY Phil and the Leipzig Gewandhaus.

[Rach3]

Masur was Director of the NY Phil and the Leipzig Gewandhaus.

Thanks for the info. Masur would be the more comparable than the other examples I think, and Masur was much more tested ! I wonder also if each the CSO and RCO may each play more concerts per year than even did the Leipzig. Makela is apparently well liked in Paris and Oslo, not so sure was in Berlin or Vienna, but he certainly has had testing exposures in several very different venues, and obviously has confidence. CSO and RCO don’t lack for capable judgment,either.

[Lance]

Klaus Mäkelä has some pretty big shoes to fill from the past, especially for me, Fritz Reiner, who did much to give the CSO its famous "sound." I wish him well.

[Rach3]

Conductors Had One Job. Now They Have Three or Four

Klaus Mäkelä and the age of the multitasking maestro.

By Alex Ross
April 2, 2024

“I love my three orchestras,” the twenty-eight-year-old Finnish conductor Klaus Mäkelä said the other day on WQXR, during a broadcast from Carnegie Hall. Mäkelä was leading an all-Stravinsky concert with the Orchestre de Paris, of which he has been the music director since 2021. The other orchestras in question are the Oslo Philharmonic, which he has led since 2020, and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, where he holds the title of Artistic Partner. In 2027, Mäkelä will become the chief conductor of the Concertgebouw, which would appear on any shortlist of the world’s finest ensembles.

No conductor in modern history, not even the lavishly hyped Gustavo Dudamel, has ever risen so quickly to the peak of the profession.

And now there are four. The Chicago Symphony, arguably the supreme exemplar of American orchestral virtuosity, announced on Tuesday that Mäkelä will become its next music director in 2027, succeeding Riccardo Muti. Mäkelä explained in a press release that Chicago and Concertgebouw will eventually become his “main responsibilities,” but that he plans on returning to the Paris and Oslo orchestras “on a regular basis after my official tenures are completed.”

To quote Vince Lombardi: “What the hell’s going on out here?” Why has the classical-music world capitulated en masse to a relative novice?

Explanations diverge. Some believe that Mäkelä is, in fact, a new god in the musical pantheon, deserving of whatever offers come his way. The writer and filmmaker Bruno Monsaingeon, who has made documentaries about Glenn Gould and Sviatoslav Richter and who recently devoted one to Mäkelä, calls him “very simply . . . the greatest conductor of the twenty-first century.” Hannah Edgar, in the Chicago Tribune, reports that Mäkelä was the overwhelming first choice of the Chicago musicians. Others see a case of attractive appearances outweighing dull reality. The American critic David Hurwitz has dismissed Mäkelä as the “blond bombshell of conducting,” the “Ken doll of classical music.”

Whether Mäkelä will evince the layered complexity that Ryan Gosling brought to the role of Ken in “Barbie” remains to be seen. So far, he’s struck me as a gifted young musician who exhibits assured technique on the podium but has yet to find a distinct interpretive personality. With the Oslo Philharmonic, he has recorded a Sibelius cycle; with the Orchestre de Paris, he has issued two albums of Stravinsky and Debussy. Tempos are sensibly chosen, textures are sensitively shaped, ensemble is precise—yet everything lacks urgency. Mäkelä’s account of “The Rite of Spring” is so nondescript that it should never have been released. Plainly, he makes a strong first impression. His staying power is unproven.

Let’s set aside the matter of Mäkelä’s qualifications, though. Even if he were as stupendous as his most ardent fans make out—embodying some dreamlike fusion of Toscanini’s fire, Furtwängler’s profundity, Bernstein’s passion, and Boulez’s perfectionism—his elevation to the status of intercontinental musical Messiah would be questionable. Both the Concertgebouw and the Chicago Symphony are orchestras at the very highest level, and they deserve a conductor’s full attention. The definition of a music director has undergone a mutation in recent decades: such doubling- and tripling-up of appointments has become commonplace. Celebrity conductors, who often earn more than a million dollars a year, seem incapable of confining themselves to one job at a time. Mäkelä-mania is only the most blatant instance of a widespread and artistically dubious syndrome.

Once upon a time, young conductors got their start with regional ensembles and worked their way up to the supposed big leagues. At Mäkelä’s age, Bernstein was leading exploratory concerts at the New York City Symphony. Furtwängler was based in Lübeck, Herbert von Karajan in Aachen, Otto Klemperer in Barmen. (Not Bremen—Barmen.) Fritz Reiner, who brought the Chicago Symphony to electrifying heights in the nineteen-fifties, launched his American career in Cincinnati, when he was thirty-three. Georg Solti, Chicago’s chief in the seventies and eighties, got his start as a répétiteur—an operatic assistant who worked with singers at the piano as they rehearsed.

The Oslo Philharmonic would have been a logical place for Mäkelä to hone his craft. It was good enough for the late Latvian conductor Mariss Jansons, who came to Oslo in 1979, when he was already in his thirties. At the time, he was serving as the second conductor at the Leningrad Philharmonic, under the great Yevgeny Mravinsky. Jansons stayed in Oslo for more than twenty years, making dozens of recordings, including a brilliant Tchaikovsky cycle. In 1997, he went to the Pittsburgh Symphony. Finally, in 2004, he arrived at the Concertgebouw.

This isn’t to say that young conductors can’t bring a welcome blast of energy to venerable institutions. The L.A. Philharmonic has a history of hiring music directors in their twenties or early thirties—Zubin Mehta, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Dudamel. Willem Mengelberg took over the Concertgebouw when he was twenty-four; Simon Rattle was twenty-five when he arrived at the City of Birmingham Symphony. But in their early years these prodigious neophytes tended to devote themselves single-mindedly to their ensembles. They built something substantial before moving on. In general, the most notable conductor-orchestra pairings have been exclusive ones. Think of George Szell’s pursuit of precision at the Cleveland Orchestra, Koussevitzky’s energetic fostering of American music in Boston, Stokowski’s modernist crusades in Philadelphia, Bernstein’s glamorous revolution at the New York Philharmonic.

These days, conductors apparently consider themselves failures if they aren’t racking up hundreds of thousands of frequent-flier miles every year. Andris Nelsons leads both the Boston Symphony and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. Yannick Nézet-Séguin divides his time between the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Metropolitan Opera, and the Orchestre Métropolitain of Montreal; not surprisingly, he is prone to cancellations. Fabio Luisi is spread across three continents, maintaining roles at the Dallas Symphony, the Danish National Symphony, and the NHK Symphony, in Japan. The British conductor Daniel Harding, in what seems a meta-commentary on the profession, has become a commercial pilot for Air France, capable of flying himself from one gig to another. (Harding has, in fact, proved more wary of taking on multiple titles than most of his contemporaries.)

American orchestra subscribers have become resigned to a phony civic ritual: a foreign-accented maestro flies in a few times a season for two or three weeks, stays in a hotel or a furnished apartment, attends a flurry of donor dinners, and dons the appropriate cap when the local baseball team makes the playoffs. Conductors who follow that life style can’t build a real connection to the city and its cultural communities.

A telling counterexample is Marin Alsop, who led the Baltimore Symphony from 2007 to 2021, eliciting performances that balanced finesse and spirit. Alsop and her wife, Kristin Jurkscheit, settled in the city and sent their son to a local school. She built a music-education program, OrchKids, investing money she received from a MacArthur Fellowship. In all, Alsop has had as constructive an influence on this country’s orchestral life as any conductor working. By rights, she ought to be leading a top-tier ensemble. For now, she is the principal guest conductor in Philadelphia.

Conductors, especially the male ones, like to speak of their jobs in connubial terms. Nelsons said in 2017, “After all, the relationship is a bit like a marriage.” (He was speaking then of the City of Birmingham Symphony, not of Boston or Leipzig.) Christoph Eschenbach, who once directed both the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Orchestre de Paris, has characterized his occupation as “a marriage with a hundred people.” Mäkelä, picking up the lingo, describes his alliance with the Orchestre de Paris thus: “We initially thought it would be a nice marriage, and it turned into something very special. Starting this season, I don’t know what happened—we very unexpectedly had a second honeymoon!” There’s something inherently obnoxious in the metaphor: it reduces a host of superb musicians to a spousal cipher. And it becomes all the more unpleasant when conductors are sustaining several such marriages simultaneously. It’s surely time for a little less polygamy in the music world.

The other big orchestral news in recent weeks also involved a conductor from Finland—one who blazed a trail for that peculiarly baton-happy nation. A few decades ago, Salonen was, like Mäkelä, a fresh-faced star, receiving glossy, sometimes silly, publicity. He once donned a cape for the cover of a Sibelius album. At the same time, though, he forged an identity as a forceful proponent of contemporary music and modernist classics. He recorded Messiaen, Lutosławski, Ligeti, his Finnish colleagues Magnus Lindberg and Kaija Saariaho. In a forty-year career, he has held directorships at four orchestras: the L.A. Phil, the Swedish Radio Symphony, the Philharmonia Orchestra, and, since 2020, the San Francisco Symphony, carrying on the progressive legacy of Michael Tilson Thomas.

When Salonen was appointed in San Francisco, he laid out grand plans for the orchestra, and, despite the pandemic, he had begun to realize them: a network of artistic partnerships with younger creative figures, a slew of commissions, semi-staged opera productions, high-tech ventures. He and the architect Frank Gehry had been talking about transforming Treasure Island, the artificial island in San Francisco Bay, into an alternative platform for the orchestra. In January, Matthew Spivey, the orchestra’s C.E.O., sent out an in-house memo saying that unfavorable financial conditions would require sweeping cutbacks. Targeted for reduction were most of the forward-thinking activities that had brought Salonen to San Francisco in the first place. In response, the conductor decided not to renew his contract. He will leave San Francisco at the end of next season.

When artists and organizations part ways, they usually concoct an anodyne, face-saving statement. In 2021, Jaap van Zweden, three years into a disappointing stint with the New York Philharmonic, made it known that the pandemic had caused him to rethink his priorities and that he would be moving on. He has since signed contracts with the Seoul Philharmonic and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France. Salonen, like Louis Langrée at Lincoln Center last summer, dropped the polite evasion. In a statement, he said, “I do not share the same goals for the future of the institution as the Board of Governors does.” The orchestra’s musicians demonstrated their support for Salonen by giving him a standing ovation—extraordinarily unusual behavior on their part. They also handed out leaflets to the audience, warning that the orchestra’s artistic standing was in jeopardy.

A week after the news of Salonen’s departure broke, I heard the San Francisco Symphony play under his direction at Disney Hall—part of a mini-tour of California. (Future touring has now been called off.) The centerpiece of the program was John Adams’s symphonic triptych “Naïve and Sentimental Music,” which Salonen premièred in Los Angeles, in 1999. It is a piece of enormous expressive power, mixing Wagnerian opulence and machinelike drive. The orchestra delivered it with almost apocalyptic intensity, as if mounting a wordless protest. What more can a conductor achieve than to usher music like this into the world?

The management and board have explained their position at length, citing looming deficits and pandemic aftershocks. Yet they are also contemplating what is certain to be a monumentally expensive renovation of Davies Hall, the orchestra’s home. Cancelling a few commissions will make little difference. The list of cuts could almost have been designed to drive Salonen away. Mark Swed, in a blunt commentary for the Los Angeles Times, sees the situation as symptomatic of arts governance across the country. He writes, “Many boards have become increasingly corporate, increasingly powerful and increasingly clueless.”

There is a magnificent surfeit of talent in today’s musical scene. The fixation on Mäkelä is bizarre because so many skilled conductors are coming forward—and not just Nordic guys with prominent cheekbones. (In the past few years, I’ve heard memorable concerts with Dalia Stasevska, Elim Chan, Karina Canellakis, Eva Ollikainen, and Xian Zhang, to name just a few.) We don’t need more junior maestros who gallivant between commitments like rakish lieutenants in a Viennese operetta. There is also no lack of gifted composers, singers, and instrumentalists. Dozens of orchestras across the country perform at a level worthy of Carnegie Hall, as the much missed Spring for Music Festival proved. What we need are administrators and board members who can make intelligent, artistically informed decisions about the possibilities that teem around them. In the realm of the arts, the powerful and the wealthy need to assume the mentality of listeners, aides, facilitators. This, not surprisingly, is hard for them to do.

Alex Ross has been the magazine’s music critic since 1996. His latest book is “Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music.”

[Belle]

Hannah Edgar, in the Chicago Tribune, reports that Mäkelä was the overwhelming first choice of the Chicago musicians. Others see a case of attractive appearances outweighing dull reality. The American critic David Hurwitz has dismissed Mäkelä as the “blond bombshell of conducting,” the “Ken doll of classical music.”

Meeoooow. I would have thought the perfect 'Ken doll' was Yannick. And what's with the reference to "Nordic high cheek-bones"?

Why would anyone want Marin Alsop, who lectured Proms audiences last year about how great it was that women conductors are now on the podium. I thought her speech lacked originality and imagination and was a reversion to lefty cookie-cutter-speak.

Klaus Mäkelä is the man of the hour and I hope good fortune continues to smile upon him. He has obviously shrugged off Yuja Wang on his path to Shangri-la. If I know anything about it he'll opt next time for a squeeze who is 15 years younger.

The Chicago band wants him and that's great:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgQJFH9d5eQ

[maestrob]

Alex Ross is known for his polemics and sour grapes. That's a critic's job and he does it well. I agree with him about the Stravinsky recording, though. Bernstein and Ozawa both recorded Rite of Spring when very young and those brilliant readings wipe Makela's off the face of the earth, to say the least. OTOH, I enjoyed his Sibelius, even if it was a bit cool.

The women, many of them great, are still waiting in the wings, it seems. Simone Young would be a prime example. She's conducted around the world, including here at the MET, and has proven herself an exciting talent with her recordings, yet she's not given a chance at a major ensemble. As for Marin Alsop, Belle, she led a thrilling Sacre du printemps with the Philadelphians recently here in Carnegie Hall.

The first rule in music circles is "Never say no!" to an offer. I wish Makela the best.

[Belle]

Alex Ross is known for his polemics and sour grapes. That's a critic's job and he does it well. I agree with him about the Stravinsky recording, though. Bernstein and Ozawa both recorded Rite of Spring when very young and those brilliant readings wipe Makela's off the face of the earth, to say the least. OTOH, I enjoyed his Sibelius, even if it was a bit cool.

The women, many of them great, are still waiting in the wings, it seems. Simone Young would be a prime example. She's conducted around the world, including here at the MET, and has proven herself an exciting talent with her recordings, yet she's not given a chance at a major ensemble. As for Marin Alsop, Belle, she led a thrilling Sacre du printemps with the Philadelphians recently here in Carnegie Hall.

The first rule in music circles is "Never say no!" to an offer. I wish Makela the best.

I didn't know 'sour grapes' were part of the critics' toolkit. When did that happen? (I know when it happens, but I'm positive you'll disagree!)

Agree about Simone Young being excellent and, on top of that, she's a super down-to-earth person whom I like a lot. Simone started her career as a repetiteur for Opera Australia and that's where she developed her opera chops. That's a demanding gig being a repetiteur, and it's the same working for a ballet company.

I don't have a problem with Marin Alsop's conducting, just her preachy off-the-shelf gratuitous and entirely predictable political commentary - which audiences need like a hole in the head.

If Klaus doesn't earn his keep then it will be off with his head, I should imagine. Meantime, if he can't or won't work with Yuja Wang that does present a dilemma for CSO and the other orchestras under Klaus's conductorship.

[Modernistfan]

As usual, it seems that no conductors born in the United States and no women were ever seriously considered. I have not heard Maestro Mäkelä live and I have not heard any of his recordings, so it is not really fair for me to comment on his conducting. The reviews of his Sibelius cycle on Decca have been somewhat mixed, and the reviews of his "Rite of Spring" also on Decca have been overwhelmingly negative.

That having been said, I have to agree with Belle (believe it or not) about Simone Young. Another woman conductor who needs to be mentioned is Karina Canellakis, and there are many others.

I am left with the definite feeling that Chicago went for the glitz and the hype, and that they could have chosen better.

[Rach3]

I am left with the definite feeling that Chicago went for the glitz and the hype, and that they could have chosen better.

I suspect Chicago was also concerned to act quickly before someone else made him an offer he could not refuse. Chicago is a GREAT town, but Winters are tough ( or were before this year ) and may hamper recruiting efforts (?) , although should not faze a Finn.Didn't faze Reiner , but that wasn't a fair fight.

[THEHORN]

I's understandable that people have misgivings about. Klaus Makela being MD in Chicago and. Amsterdam simultaneously . It would be a demanding job for a highly experienced conductor to head. only one of these two renowned. orchestras . But let's give him and chance and I wish him well .
He appears to be exceptionally talented and. he would never have been chosen to be MD in Oslo, Paris, Amsterdam and. Chicago unless the musicians had the highest regard for him . The members of. great orchestras can't be fooled for a second . When a conductor , young or not so young appears at rehearsals for the first time with them , they can tell virtually instantly whether that individual has the chops needed for the job . If he or she doesn't , they will eat him or her alive at rehearsals and that. conductor will not be invited. to conduct with them again .
Apparently , Makela has what it takes .

[Belle]

Totally agree with this.

[jserraglio]

I's understandable that people have misgivings about. Klaus Makela being MD in Chicago and. Amsterdam simultaneously . It would be a demanding job for a highly experienced conductor to head. only one of these two renowned. orchestras . But let's give him and chance and I wish him well .

Agree. Sometimes, behind the glitz and the hype there lives a great musician. Cf. Leopold Stokowski, Leonard Bernstein, Andre Previn, Morton Gould, et al.

[lennygoran]

The Era of Klaus Mäkelä, Conducting Phenom, Begins in Chicago

On Thursday, the richly talented 28-year-old maestro led the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for the first time since being named its next music director.




https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/05/arts ... =url-share

[Rach3]

The Era of Klaus Mäkelä, Conducting Phenom, Begins in Chicago

Thanks for this.Glad to hear all went well. Happy workplace not necessarily good for the music ?

Seems Yuja may be the one doing the cancellings, but machts nicht. https://slippedisc.com/2024/04/clevelan ... and-klaus/

[barney]

As I wrote in another thread, I have nothing but contempt for Wang's ego, childishness and game-playing (eg the ultra-late cancellations). Professional people very frequently have to work with others they don't like, and they mostly manage it. She signed deals; she should uphold them. For people like Wang a contract is only a contract for the other side - let them cancel and hear her howl. Deeply pathetic and immoral.

[Belle]

Agree with this, though I think it's a bit harsh. There's also something inherently sad about prodigious talents like Wang and Lang Lang (all those people, so few available names!); they're hot-housed and often have to forego childhood to spend thousands of lonely hours at a musical instrument. Only years later does this premature elision into adulthood begin to cause problems. Not only that, their helicopter parents give these children the impression that they have to perform in order to get love and affirmation. If Yuja Wang is behaving childishly then it's certain she is having the childhood earlier denied her.

It's a tale that goes right back to Mozart.

[Rach3]

Makela's reading at Carnegie recently (March 16,2024) with his Paris orchestra of Stravinsky's "Firebird" and "Rite" are here free to hear (audio ):

https://www.wqxr.org/story/orchestre-de ... ab=summary

( I have not.)