Conductor Mikko Franck taps his Gallic experience for an all-French program

If records were kept about how early and how fast some musicians have become professional conductors, Mikko Franck surely would have set some. He began conducting studies when he just 16, and two years later, he already had secured his first international engagement.

“And then very quickly, I was already working full time as a conductor, and it has been like that since,“ said the Finnish conductor, now 46. ”One engagement led to another, and everything happened rather fast, but also in a natural way.”

Franck, who will step down in September as music director of the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France after a decade in the role, returns Sept. 25-28 for his third engagement as a guest conductor with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He last led the ensemble in December 2023 in a program that included Johannes Brahms’ Violin Concerto with soloist Hilary Hahn, while in her final season as CSO artist-in-residence.

This time, the conductor will draw on his Gallic experience to lead an all-French program that includes two works by Maurice Ravel — the Piano Concerto for Left Hand and Piano Concerto in G Major — featuring German-Japanese pianist Alice Sara Ott as soloist. Also on the line-up is a suite from Georges Bizet’s 1875 opera, Carmen, and the CSO’s first performances of Les Eaux célestes, a 2023 symphonic poem by Camille Pépin, now 34, who in 2020 was named composer of the year by the Victoires de la Musique Classique.

Pépin’s eight-minute work was inspired by an ancient Chinese legend about the love of Orihime, who weaves clothing to create clothes for the gods, and Hikobashi, who tends the dairy cows to feed the kingdom.

“To illustrate this legend,” she writes in her notes on the composition, “I used new textures and timbral combinations. The vibraphone, crotales and cowbells, when played with a bow, represent the impalpable clouds. The strings move through space like a fog that one tries in vain to catch. The tuned cowbells, tubular bells and the earthy sound of the marimba symbolize the herdsman of the stars. Gongs, Chinese cymbals and the celesta in the lower register transport us to China. The keyboards are also used in a scintillating manner, like stars. The woodwind parts, meanwhile, are fluid, virtuoso and feature many sweeping lines like the rustling of wings.”   

When Franck was just 5 years old, the youngster told his parents that when he grew up, he wanted to be a violinist and a conductor. “I don’t really know how that came about,” he said. “But it was a very strong vision and a very strong wish throughout my childhood.”

He began lessons on the violin, but he didn’t get a chance to take on conducting until he was 16 and studying at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. One day, the orchestral students were offered the opportunity to conduct their ensemble, and Franck decided to give it a shot. “I thought, ‘I wanted to do this,’ so I went and tried,” he said.

It so happened that the renowned Finnish conducting teacher, Jorma Panula, who has mentored such notables in the field as Esa-Pekka Salonen, Sakari Oramo and Osmo Vänskä, was in the room, and he immediately invited the youngster to study with him privately. A year later, Franck entered the conducting program of the Sibelius Academy, and his career started in lightning fashion soon after.

People often ask about Panula’s teaching method, Franck said, and in actuality, there isn’t really a method. “For him, it’s always about the student’s own natural abilities," he said. He’s not trying to make all the students be something that doesn’t come naturally. He wants to find for each student their own way and their own conducting language.”

That said, there are certain basic principles of the Finnish conducting school, Franck said, and those include a clear physical technique and consistent support of the musicians. “The biggest point is as a conductor, if you can’t help the musicians, at least try not to disturb them too much,“ he said. ”That’s kind of the golden rule that I also now try to [instill in] my students when I’m teaching.” 

“The biggest point is as a conductor, if you can’t help the musicians, at least try not to disturb them too much. That’s kind of [my] golden rule." — Mikko Franck

By the time Franck was in his early 20s, he had already led most of the leading Scandinavian orchestras and had made his debut with such ensembles as London Philharmonic and Munich Philharmonic.

He served as the Belgian National Orchestra’s artistic director in 2002-07 and became the Finnish National Opera’s music director in 2006. After six months, he announced his resignation because of a lack of confidence in then-general director Erkki Korhonen and administrative director Pekka Kauranen. But as a result, he was given the dual titles of artistic director and general music director, posts that he held with the Finnish company through 2013.

“I try to keep opera in my calendar very regularly,” he said. “Opera is my big love. Right from when I started as a conductor, I’ve been conducting half the year symphonic repertoire and half the year opera.”

Since early in his career, Franck has championed the music of Einojuhani Rautavaara, a still under-appreciated Finnish composer, who died in 2016. The two met in 1997 when Franck made his debut with the Helsinki Philharmonic. Orchestra officials proposed that he lead a work by Rautavaara, a protégé of Jean Sibelius.

Franck didn’t know much about Rautavaara at the time, so he asked to see the music. “When I opened the score, it was really speaking to me,” he said. “Immediately, it felt like I had found my musical home. I felt that if I were a composer, I would be writing a similar kind of music.”

He conducted the proposed work, Angels and Visitations (1978), and had a chance to meet the composer after the concert. The two quickly hit it off and became close friends. “We had an age difference of 51 years, but he really took me as an equal, and it was interesting to be talking to him and working with him,” said Franck, who conducted the premieres of some of the composer’s later works.

Franck’s history with Rautavaara’s Deux Sérénades (Two Serenades) dates to 2014, when Hahn performed Rautavaara’s Violin Concerto with Franck and the Radio France orchestra; Hahn was so taken with the piece that she wanted to commission a piece by the composer. Franck spoke to the composer about the idea, suggesting perhaps a serenade instead of another concerto. But Rautavaara’s health was already shaky at the time, and the two did not hear any more about the work, and they assumed that it was not to be.

Indeed, Rautavaara finished another piece for violin and orchestra for Anne Akiko Meyers in 2015, Fantasia, and that was believed to be his final creation. But, in fact, he had quietly written the first of two serenades and had completed the violin part and as well as most of the sketches for the orchestral part of a second.

“We found the music after his death,” Franck said. A student of Rautavaara’s, Kalevi Aho, completed the orchestration, and Franck and Hahn premiered Two Serenades with the Radio France orchestra in 2019 and recorded it for an album that was released two years later. 

This is an updated version of a feature that was previously published on Experience CSO.