After an impressive season debut last week in Mahler’s massive Symphony No. 3, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s music director designate, Klaus Mäkelä, returned Thursday evening for another top-flight outing, leading the first in a set of four concerts.
This time, the 29-year-old Finnish conductor showed himself to be right at home leading two unquestioned masterpieces of 19th-century romanticism by Johannes Brahms and Antonín Dvořák, the former serving as important champion of and influence on the latter.
The heart of this program was a strong, authoritative version of Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat major, Op. 83, which has four movements instead of the usual three and runs some 50 minutes but never felt long here. Though the CSO’s history is dotted with milestone performances of this bedrock work, this one more than held its own.
Daniil Trifonov, the CSO’s 2024-25 artist-in-residence, reinforced his standing as one of the finest pianists of our time, delivering an interpretation of extraordinary range and insight. He brings an uncommon freshness and immediacy to his playing, adjusting his touch almost bar by bar to achieve an array of tonal nuances and emotional shadings.
Mäkelä, who showed himself to be a very adept accompanist, made sure that the orchestra was not just performing alongside Trifonov but effecting a genuine give and take, each responding to and enhancing the other and together conveying the work’s full drama and drive.
The captivating second movement, which Brahms’ famously downplayed as a “tiny wisp of a scherzo,” is actually a key section with complex, contradictory currents. Trifonov brought appropriate punch to the fast, driving scherzo moments and spellbinding playing to the slow sections.
Another high point was the third movement which opened and closed with probing, eloquent and suitably complementary solos from principal cellist John Sharp, who joined the CSO in 1986 and is one of the ensemble’s pillars. After a few minutes, Trifonov finally made his entrance, delivering an introspective, transporting, even transcendent take on the piano’s opening solo and those descriptors could be applied to his playing throughout this affecting, meditative movement.
Just as was the case in the Mahler symphony last week, the orchestra again was very much with Mäkelä, delivering committed, beautifully realized playing here and all evening long both as an ensemble and in key solo moments.
For an encore, Trifonov, who comes across as somewhat self-effacing and anything but showy, chose a surprising wisp of a work that was almost over before it began — Chopin’s Prelude No. 10 in C-sharp minor, which only runs 30 seconds or so.
The second half of the evening began with an unusual kind of palate cleanser, a five-minute work by Pierre Boulez for brass septet, in this case, seven members of the CSO’s long-renowned brass section who delivered a performance of polish and precision.
Mäkelä deserves kudos for tipping his hat to the centenary of Boulez’s birth and at least tacitly acknowledging the towering musical figure’s important connections to the CSO, including his tenure as principal guest conductor in 1995–2006.
The 1987 work, “Initiale,” commissioned for the opening of the Menil Collection in Houston, is compact, prototypical example of Boulez’s spiky modernism. It opens in fanfare-like fashion and quickly settles into a tight, interlocking piece with sharp-edged rhythms, clashing harmonies and exaggerated effects.
Rounding out the evening was a bright, warmly spirited performance of Dvořák’s Symphony No. 7 in D minor, Op. 70, including a taut, thrilling take on the Scherzo third movement. The CSO delivered a consistently fluid, robust sound, especially in the strings, that was ideally suited to the composer’s fervent, full-bodied romanticism.
Many questions remain, of course, but these two weeks have made it clearer why the CSO chose Mäkelä as its next music director. If he can continue to deliver interpretations on this level, then the orchestra should be on solid footing when he takes over as music director in September 2027.
This weekend’s performances are the maestro’s last with the CSO this season. He will return in 2025-26 for four sets of concerts in Orchestra Hall and an American tour, and he will make his Ravinia Festival debut with two CSO programs in the summer of 2026.