United States Varied: Yunchan Lim (piano), Chicago Symphony Orchestra / Klaus Mäkelä (conductor). Orchestra Corridor, Chicago, 20.12.2025. (ZC)
Unsuk Chin – subito con forza
Robert Schumann – Piano Concerto in A minor
Jörg Widmann – Con brio
Beethoven – Symphony No.7 in A serious
Final October, on trip in Amsterdam, I slipped into the Concertgebouw to listen to Klaus Mäkelä lead the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. He had not but assumed his full duties as music director there, however the relationship already felt settled and purposeful. This system paired Andrew Norman’s Play with Richard Strauss’s Don Juan and Der Rosenkavalier waltzes, a mix that confirmed each Mäkelä’s ambition and his curiosity. Norman’s sprawling, high-voltage rating got here off higher than anticipated; the Strauss, lush and heroic by nature, felt much less totally formed. Nonetheless, the live performance provided a helpful snapshot of a conductor within the midst of defining himself, drawn to contrasts and prepared to take dangers.
This week, Mäkelä introduced an analogous philosophy to Orchestra Corridor, standing earlier than the Chicago Symphony, one other orchestra he’s quickly to guide. As soon as once more, previous and new had been positioned in proximity. Robert Schumann and Beethoven fashioned the backbone of this system, flanked by two fashionable works: Unsuk Chin’s subito con forza and Jörg Widmann’s Con brio – each receiving Chicago Symphony premieres. The impact was not novelty for its personal sake however a deliberate try and focus Beethoven’s acquainted music by means of a contemporary lens.
The night’s centerpiece was Schumann’s Piano Concerto, with Yunchan Lim as soloist. Lim, the South Korean pianist who turned the youngest winner of the Van Cliburn Worldwide Piano Competitors in 2022, has rapidly remodeled early acclaim into world fame. His victory efficiency of Rachmaninoff’s Third Concerto that 12 months rightly marked Lim as a musician of uncommon command, however Schumann asks for one thing totally different in his concerto. The work has a stressed spirit, its drama turned inward. Additionally it is lopsided: the piano dominates, whereas the orchestra acts much less as an equal associate than as a responsive, virtually confessional presence.
Lim proved a great information. Within the concerto’s extra extroverted passages, he dispatched the figurations with energy and readability, by no means sounding rushed. What lingered longer had been the quieter moments. Right here, Lim moved by means of Schumann’s phrases with a type of poetic endurance, letting traces breathe and dissolve. Mäkelä and the Chicago Symphony had been attentive companions. The exchanges between Lim and the wind gamers had the intimacy of chamber music, a balanced dialog quite than a contest for consideration. Lim lived as much as his status however, extra importantly, he steered an interpretive depth that goes past youthful brilliance.
This system’s surprises got here at its edges. Chin and Widmann, each European modernists, write music that largely sidesteps conventional tonality and melody in favor of abstraction and gesture. Chin’s subito con forza opened the primary half with a jolt. Its opening gesture echoes Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture, a reference that rapidly fractures right into a barrage of coloration and texture. Over the subsequent 5 minutes, the orchestra appeared to detonate constantly, with Beethoven’s presence felt all over the place with out ever totally materializing.
Widmann’s Con brio, which opened the second half, continued the dialog. Now one of the vital steadily carried out works of the twenty-first century, it channels Beethoven’s vitality with out quoting him straight. Widmann requires an array of prolonged strategies: winds respiration into their devices to create ghostly, colorless sounds and different results that rub towards extra conventional taking part in. The result’s a type of fashionable fury, stuffed with pulse and momentum. Mäkelä stored the stress taut, permitting the work’s Beethovenian drive to hold the viewers ahead quite than overwhelm it.
Beethoven’s Symphony No.7 closed this system. Conducting with out a rating, Mäkelä formed a efficiency that was each pushed and thoroughly weighted, its vitality tightly coiled from the opening bars. He had a agency grasp of the symphony’s pulse, not simply within the outer actions however within the second motion as nicely, whose regular, dirge-like tread unfolded with a grim and exquisite endurance, accumulating weight till it felt virtually inexorable. Within the finale, he pressed forward with abandon, urging the music ahead because the orchestra responded with precision and drive. The taking part in took on a steely depth that swept the corridor, bringing the viewers to its ft the moment the ultimate notes landed.
There was a lot to admire within the night, and greater than a touch of what the long run might maintain beneath Mäkelä’s management. Although the Beethoven thrilled, it was the Robert Schumann that lingered. Lim’s feeling for the music was unmistakable, confirmed by a beneficiant encore – Chopin’s Waltz in A minor, Op.34 No.2. Simply as placing was Mäkelä’s sensitivity on the podium and the orchestra’s willingness to fulfill him there. His ease and evident pleasure in collaboration will be the most encouraging signal of all as he prepares to take the helm of two of the world’s nice musical establishments.
Zach Carstensen
Featured Picture: Klaus Mäkelä conducts the Chicago Symphony © Todd Rosenberg
