Klaus M\u00e4kel\u00e4, who becomes the new music director of the CSO with the 2027\u201328 season, returned to Chicago last week to lead an invigorating program of music on Thursday and Friday nights. At first glance, it was difficult to see how the three pieces he selected fit together. They were Darius Milhaud’s \u201cLe Boeuf sur le Toit,\u201d George Gershwin’s \u201cAn American in Paris,\u201d and Igor Stravinsky’s \u201cThe Rite of Spring.\u201d My first thought was that they each offered a different kind of boisterousness with strongly rhythmically-oriented music. But a simpler explanation is that they all have Paris connections.<\/p>\n
\u201cLe Boeuf sur le Toit\u201d (The Ox on the Roof) opened the evening. This frisky ballet celebrates nightlife with musical hijinks that suggest boozing, dancing, and lots of general frolicking. M\u00e4kel\u00e4 leaned into the raucous sections with enthusiasm, and the contrasts between these high-energy moments and the dreamy slower sections were nicely drawn. M\u00e4kel\u00e4\u2019s physicality on the podium made the dance music all the more charming, notably during the tango.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cAn American in Paris\u201d is a crowd-pleaser and Gershwin\u2019s bluesy and jazzy score sparkled under M\u00e4kel\u00e4\u2019s baton. You could feel the bustle of the crowds on the street, the frustration of the drivers in a traffic jam, and the lazy \u2014 almost drowsy \u2014 blues music that rises into the air. Concertmaster Robert Chen\u2019s solo was elegant, and Esteban Batall\u00e1n\u2019s trumpet was bright and engaging. There was swinging syncopation and a beautiful sense of spaciousness.<\/span><\/p>\n The program concluded with Stravinsky\u2019s \u201cRite of Spring,\u201d famous for the riot that ensued at its premiere in Paris in 1913. M\u00e4kel\u00e4 ascended the podium and held his head lowered for several seconds before starting, and bassoonist Keith Buncke then offered gorgeous and mysterious music to get things rolling. There was always a commanding pulse to the music and M\u00e4kel\u00e4 knew how to intensify the taut elements. Commanding brass and earthy winds were superb in drawing the “Scenes of Pagan Russia in Two Parts,\u201d as the score is subtitled. The music exuded primordial urgency and left you musing over the remarkable power that the renewal brought by spring has had over mankind\u2019s entire history.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.hpherald.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Klaus M\u00e4kel\u00e4, who becomes the new music director of the CSO with the 2027\u201328 season, returned to Chicago last week to lead an invigorating program of music on Thursday and Friday nights. At first glance, it was difficult to see how the three pieces he selected fit together. They were Darius Milhaud’s \u201cLe Boeuf sur […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2320574,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[349474,21800],"class_list":["post-2320573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-arts_and_entertainment","tag-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Makela-triumphs-with-boisterous-and-invigorating-music-Arts.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2320573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2320573"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2320573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2320575,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2320573\/revisions\/2320575"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2320574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2320573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2320573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2320573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}