From Helsinki to Highland Park: Klaus Mäkelä bows with the CSO at Ravinia

Klaus Mäkelä’s parents had one wish. “For me not to become a musician,” he said.

“And unfortunately [for them],” he said, “it didn’t become true.”

But to be fair, the Finnish conductor, now the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Zell Music Director Designate, didn’t stand much of a chance of fulfilling that wish.

Mäkelä, who makes his Ravinia debut on Aug. 6-7, exactly 120 years to the day since the CSO first gave a concert in the festival’s pavilion, grew up in a musical family. His mother played piano, his father played cello, and at age 7, Klaus followed suit.

As he told WFMT-FM program host Lisa Flynn during the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association’s “A Conversation with Klaus Mäkelä” program on Oct. 15, 2025, at Orchestra Hall, when he began singing in the children’s choir at the Finnish National Opera, namely in Georges Bizet’s Carmen, his eyes were opened to conducting.

“I was completely mesmerized that the conductor was able to play the music, or play the orchestra like one would play an instrument,” he said. “I just really wanted to do it, too. I kept dreaming about it and trying to read scores.”

His admission to the cello program at Finland’s Sibelius Academy sealed his fate.

“There was a conducting class with a very famous professor, Jorma Panula, who, of course, everyone knew; he has been the great teacher of all the European conductors for decades. And then I was invited into the class, which was a bit of a surprise. And here I am now.”

Mäkelä’s road to the CSO took unexpected turns. As Jeff Alexander, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association’s president, recalled during the talk with Mäkelä and Flynn, the search committee for the CSO’s next music director had its first meeting on Feb. 20, 2020.

“And three weeks later, the world shut down,” Alexander said.

Any orchestra would prefer to interact with its potential new music directors in person; to experience their rapport with the orchestra, observe their artistry, see them in a new space. While interviewing via Zoom the potential candidates they did know, the search committee began researching less-familiar candidates online. And there, they found their future pick.

“We came upon a video of Klaus conducting the Orchestre de Paris [in] the slow movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7, and it was mesmerizing,” Alexander said. “Just the sound he was getting out of the orchestra, even [as heard] through our little speakers, and the phrasing, the tempo, the atmosphere that he created. It’s a three-minute clip. And that was the first time we really became entranced with him.”

“The Chicago Symphony is one of those orchestras that, when you see the name … you already feel something.” — Klaus Mäkelä

Mäkelä, eventually, was similarly taken.

“I remember very well how it was to come here for the first time,” he said of his April 2022 debut with the CSO. “I love to listen to recordings, and the Chicago Symphony is one of those orchestras that, when you see the name on a record cover, you already feel something before you even open the case. And, of course, I was thinking about how it would be to stand here, and hear the orchestra live in this hall — in this incredible place where so many great concerts have taken place — and to work with all of you. I remember it was extremely exciting, and of course I was nervous as hell, but I enjoyed it tremendously.”

Stravinsky’s The Firebird, which Mäkelä will conduct at Ravinia on Aug. 7, was arguably the standout of the evening.

Alexander recalled that after a rehearsal of the piece, multiple musicians stopped him in the hallway, telling him “this is the man.”

“And of course, by the end of the week, after the performances and especially with the Stravinsky — it was so beautifully done — we said, ‘OK, we have to get very serious about Klaus,’ ” Alexander said. “When he came back in February of 2023, we had a search committee meeting scheduled for the week after Klaus was going to be here.”

Once again, the rehearsals were magical.

“And the first performance was so special that we moved up the search committee meeting to the Saturday afternoon, and voted unanimously to offer him the position,” Alexander said.

The Aug. 6 program that Mäkelä conducts at Ravinia also harks back to his earlier CSO concerts, pairing another two of his favorites, Sibelius and Strauss.

For Mäkelä, “I often think about music as an art collection,” he said. “When you have a great museum like the Art Institute, or the Louvre in Paris, you have a collection of all the great works, and you can put them together in any order you want.

“In a way, here at the Chicago Symphony, we have a collection of written classical pieces, spanning about 400 years. And we put them together in combinations we think are interesting for both us and you.”

To Mäkelä, much of the joy is in the audience experience.

“When you hear a concert, it doesn’t have to be in this incredible room, although this one is great,” he said of Orchestra Hall. But “it touches you spontaneously. You don’t have to know anything about the piece … but you hear it and feel touched, and this spontaneous touch is something incredible.

"And we need to have a great connection with you. So we have to make sure that we don’t lose that at any moment. We also have to challenge you, because we’re here to provoke you, but then also to console and comfort you. And I mean, that’s what it is; it needs to have the different levels.”

Though his schedule includes guest conducting engagements around the world, “I go to listen to concerts as much as I can,” he said. “And in those moments, I always come out feeling at least a better person than when I went in, because you have this moment for yourself to really feel; art somehow gives us the possibility to see where we belong.”

So, despite their initial wishes, how do Mäkelä’s parents now feel about their son’s journey into music?

“I think they’re still very proud,” he said, adding, “in their very Finnish way.” •

Excerpt provided courtesy of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association and WFMT-FM Program Host Lisa Flynn from "A Conversation with Klaus Mäkelä," on Oct.15, 2025.

This is an excerpt from an article published in the Ravinia magazine. Read the full version here. Reprinted with permission.