Santtu-Matias Rouvali, another Finnish maestro, eager for his CSO debut

Santtu-Matias Rouvali, one of the latest in a continuous stream of talented conductors from Finland, had a big moment in the American media when he received a major profile in the New York Times in 2022.

Music critic Joshua Barone described Rouvali as a contender to become music director of the New York Philharmonic, a post that ultimately went to Gustavo Dudamel, the dynamo who has been the artistic head of Los Angeles Philharmonic since 2009.

“Rouvali has developed a reputation as a lively conductor,” wrote Barone, ”one who revels in experimentation and fluid interpretations, and who has a gift — befitting his background as a percussionist — for internal rhythms and harmonies.”

The Finnish conductor, now 39, will make his Chicago Symphony Orchestra debut Feb. 27-28 and March 1-2. “It’s always great to meet a new orchestra in America,” Rouvali said, “because I didn’t go to America that much in my [early] career. I kind of saved it for later.”

Klaus Mäkelä, another high-flying, young Finnish conductor and a friend, was named the CSO’s next music director last April. Mäkelä will begin his duties in September 2027 and holds the title of music director designate for now.

“It’s great,” Rouvali said. “I’m so happy for him and proud of him. It’s fantastic to meet his coming orchestra,” he said.

For his CSO debut, Rouvali has chosen a program that will begin with Tchaikovsky’s well-known Capriccio italien, Op. 45 (1880), a 15-minute fantasy for orchestra. “It’s a little showpiece to warm the audience,” he said. “I’m a big fan of Russian music, and I like all the standards from Tchaikovsky a lot. I don’t feel bored with those things.”

Next will come Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 2, written in 1912-21 and then rewritten in 1923 after the original score was destroyed in a fire. Serving as soloist will be South Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho, winner of the 2015 International Chopin Piano Competition. The keyboardist, now 30, is serving as the Berlin Philharmonic’s 2024-25 artist-in-residence.

Rouvali said the two have worked together frequently and are good friends, so they don’t need to talk much before a program. “We feel happy with each other,” he said. “It’s good to have a soloist with whom you have a good chemistry for your debut.”

Rounding out the lineup is the Symphony No. 5 (1914-15) by his famed fellow countryman, Jean Sibelius. “It’s great to bring some Sibelius,” he said. “The fifth one has been always in my heart somehow very strongly. That’s a good test for the orchestra — how they can play it for me. It will be interesting to see if I can get my ideas through easily. It is a fantastic piece, and I think in general, Americans like Sibelius.”

Rouvali is finishing a multiyear recording project with Sweden’s Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, in which the orchestra is recording all of Sibelius’ symphonies, concertos and tone poems. Sibelius had a close relationship with the Swedish orchestra, and it still has musical parts the composer used for his conducting appearances, with his original bowing indications intact. “The tradition has been there for so long to play Sibelius,” Rouvali said.

This season marks Rouvali’s last as chief conductor in Gothenburg, a post he has held since 2017. Moving forward, he will focus his attention on guest conducting and the London Philharmonia, where he has served as principal conductor since 2021, taking over a post previously occupied by such notables as Riccardo Muti, Christoph von Dohnányi and Esa-Pekka Salonen. (He also serves as honorary conductor for the Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra, close to his home in Finland.)

He first visited the English orchestra in January 2013, performing residency concerts on the outskirts of London. “Immediately after that one week, I realized this is the orchestra I want to work with because I’m the kind of conductor who doesn’t really talk so much. People need to understand [me] from the movements I do. And that orchestra really reacted spontaneously without any hesitation. They were very welcoming and excellently prepared. It surprised me how good they were in the first rehearsal.” He became one of two new principal guest conductors of the orchestra during the 2017-18 season and was appointed to his current position in May 2019.

Rouvali has continued to deepen his relationship with the New York Philharmonic, despite missing out on its music directorship, making his first summer appearance with this past year during its annual residency at the Bravo! Vail Music Festival in Colorado.

“The chemistry worked from day one, and we enjoyed what we were doing,” he said of his time with the Philharmonic. “I was a big fan of Bernstein, and it was a big thing for me to understand that I’m standing in the front of that orchestra [where Bernstein had been music director in 1958-69]. I was very much looking forward to my engagement with them.”

For his first program with the Philharmonic in 2019, he included a Sibelius work, just as he is doing in Chicago. There it was the composer’s First Symphony. “So I think they found out my Sibelius was OK, and then the trust was kind of built between the orchestra and me,” he said.

What is hardly mentioned in Rouvali’s biography is opera, and he admits that he has done very little of it — just four productions. It’s not that he doesn’t like opera, he just hasn’t been able to find a way to work it into his already hectic schedule.

If he is to take on an opera, he said, he wants to be there for the entirety of the rehearsals and not just come in at the last minute and lead the dress rehearsal and the performances. “So simply there is no time for one month for me to be preparing an opera for now,” he said. “But maybe when you are a bit older, you fancy that.”

Unlike many conductors who move to a major music center once their career takes off, Rouvali has chosen to live in the Finnish countryside on a 34-acre farm that was once part of a larger spread that dates back to the Middle Ages. Rouvali chops wood, hunts and gardens, using the isolation as a way to get away from the pressures of his musical life.

“This is the place I always want to be when I am free of work,” he said. “Just keeping the balance right. It’s kind of a hectic lifestyle we all have, and I need the nature and fishing and cooking, all that kind of normal stuff.”

Rouvali has no idea what might be next for him in his career, but wherever he winds up, he made clear that the fit has to be right, and he has to feel comfortable. “I’m not particularly searching for any other stuff,” he said. “I was always booked with many orchestras so there wasn’t time to do guest conducting, and there are still plenty of orchestras to get to know. Who knows where that corner of the world might be?”