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When Susanna Mälkki stepped down last year as chief conductor of the Helsinki Philharmonic, it was one of the first times in her career she found herself without an ongoing conducting post. But don’t expect her to be out of a job for long.
In February 2023, for example, New Yorker music critic Alex Ross wrote that the former principal guest conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic was “the person best poised” to carry on the ensemble’s mission as the replacement for departing music director Gustavo Dudamel.
“There have been wonderful offers already, but it’s matter of all elements being right,” said the 54-year-old Finnish conductor of a potential post. “I can’t wait.”
In the meantime, Mälkki is guest conducting. And not just anywhere. A testament to her standing in the field, she has been leading the world’s top ensembles this season, including the Cleveland Orchestra, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Staatskapelle Dresden and New York Philharmonic.
Also on that list is the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, where she returns March 21-24 for a program that includes the world premiere of Lowell Liebermann’s Flute Concerto No. 2 with Principal Flute Stefán Ragnar Höskuldsson as soloist.
“It’s incredibly fulfilling and inspiring to be working with these orchestras because they consist of absolutely incredible artists,” she said of her guest-conducting stops. “These are musicmaking teams of tradition, refinement and musical intelligence and all of that. I feel extremely fortunate and grateful for this, and I’m very happy to be coming back to Chicago, where I’ve been in the past, but it has been a few years.”
“It’s incredibly fulfilling and inspiring to be working with these orchestras because they consist of absolutely incredible artists. . . . These are musicmaking teams of tradition, refinement and musical intelligence . . ."
Mälkki, who was named Musical America’s 2017 Conductor of the Year, is among a plethora of acclaimed conductors who have emerged from Finland in recent decades, including Esa-Pekka Salonen, Sakari Oramo and Osmo Vänskä. All were students of famed, 93-year-old pedagogue Jorma Panula for at least part of their training.
She first gained international attention in 2006-13 as music director of the Ensemble intercontemporain, a new-music group founded in Paris (where Mälkki continues to live) by pioneering conductor and composer Pierre Boulez in 1976. Because of this position, she became seen as a contemporary-music specialist and was sometimes unfairly stereotyped in that role.
Since that time, she has taken more mainstream conducting posts and has made a conscious effort to expand her repertoire while still taking on regular doses of world premieres and other new music. “One thing doesn’t exclude the other,” she said. Indeed, she even believes they can be “mutually enriching,” because her work with living composers and new scores can help her bring a fresh, inquisitive approach to the standards.
One older composer to which she is especially drawn is Mahler, a beloved Romantic-era composer whose works include nine symphonies and his valedictory orchestral song cycle, Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth). “I think every conductor wants to do Mahler,” Mälkki said. “And there’s a reason for it. Mahler was a conductor himself, and he knows so well how to write for an orchestra.” She noted in particular the telling details the composer incorporated into his careful notations.
Mälkki said she waited until she was older to take on the Mahler symphonies, which she described as so “epic” and “psychologically deep” that she needed to have the life experience and the necessary conducting tools to do them justice. “This is sometimes cinematic music in a good sense,” she said. “You can have this huge perspective, and they are always moving forward in a story-telling way. It’s not like abstract music. It’s very human. Every Mahler symphony is a journey.”
The conductor sees her temporary break from any conducting posts as a time for reassessing her priorities and rebalancing her work-life balance. One thing she knows for sure is that she wants to do more opera. In December 2016, she made her Metropolitan Opera debut, becoming just the fourth female conductor to lead a production there. In October, she conducted Leoš Janáček’s The Makropulos Case at the Opera Bastille in Paris and she will lead Claude Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande this summer in Aix-en-Provence, France.
“I’m really fascinated by opera,” she said, “because of the teamwork aspect with the stage director, the singers, the staging and all of that. So, I think this is a creative time — study and reading — and the shift in repertoire, of course, will happen gradually.”
But Mälkki made clear that she is looking forward to “dedicating” herself again to an institution as an artistic leader. “It can be an orchestra,” she said, “or it can be an opera house or it can be both.” She acknowledged the increased responsibility and expectations that are placed on today’s music directors who have to be fundraisers and marketers along with musicmakers.
“But, of course, it presents more profound musicmaking when you know the people,” she said. “You’re not just visiting but you are creating something together over the long term, so I’m definitely up for it.”
As noted, the centerpiece of Mälkki’s CSO program is the Liebermann premiere with Ragnar Höskuldsson as soloist. “These occasions are always wonderful in so many ways, and, of course, I know the importance of Mr. Liebermann, so I’m extremely happy to be doing this,” she said.
In addition to studying the score, she assembled a list of questions pertaining to such elements as dynamics and articulations, what she called “normal interpretation questions,” that she planned to pose to Liebermann before rehearsals begin. “Especially for world premieres, the most important thing is to make a composer as happy as he or she can be,” she said. In addition, she will meet with the soloist to discuss the handling of transitions and any other issues.
For the second half of the program, Mälkki wanted what she called a “big repertoire piece” to offset the premiere, and she and the CSO settled on Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 in G Major (1899-1900). “It’s a contrast, but it’s also inviting the new piece to the repertoire right away,” Mälkki said. “We’re not putting the modern piece in some kind of modern-music weekend, but we actually play these new works in the big context.”
“We’re not putting the modern piece in some kind of modern-music weekend, but we actually play these new works in the big context.”
The Fourth Symphony is the third of his Wunderhorn symphonies, which incorporate themes from Mahler’s song cycle, Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youth’s Magic Horn). Central to this work is the song, Das himmlische Leben (The Heavenly Life), which draws from the same text as the song cycle but is not part of it. Fragments of the song can be heard in the first three movements, and then it is sung in its entirety in the fourth movement by a soprano. The soloist for these performances is Ying Fang, who is making her CSO subscription series debut.
According to Mälkki, Mahler’s music is always about torment vs. bliss. “But in the Fourth Symphony,” she said, “it’s quite interesting, because there is more lightness and light than in many other [of his] symphonies. Obviously, there are moments of torment, and then this extraordinary finale, which is playing with the angels.”
In past appearances with the CSO, Mälkki has led such large-scale works as Debussy’s La mer and Richard Strauss’ Also sprach Zarathustra but never a Mahler symphony. “So, this is going to be beautiful,” she said. “I’m really looking forward to that.”
Rounding out the program is the Prelude to Act 1 of Richard Wagner’s Lohengrin. She wanted something a little bit in the spirit of the Fourth Symphony, and she said this opera, which debuted in 1850, relates with its other-worldly and sacred elements.
