Josefowicz, Leila

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    Susanna Mälkki and Santtu-Matias Rouvali Take Over the Philharmonic

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    Susanna Mälkki and Santtu-Matias Rouvali made back-to-back appearances with the orchestra, leading similar programs with distinct style.Finland’s top exports may be machinery and fuel, but in classical music it is also one of the world’s leading producer of conductors.Over the past century, Finland has nurtured a culture of musical education that has brought about generations of brilliance at the podium. It has given us some of the finest conductors working today, like Esa-Pekka Salonen, as well as some of our buzziest, like Klaus Mäkelä, who picked up storied jobs in Amsterdam and Chicago before the age of 30.As if in a testament to the saturation of Finnish conductors, the New York Philharmonic booked two back-to-back: Santtu-Matias Rouvali, for a program that continues through Tuesday at David Geffen Hall, and Susanna Mälkki last week.The similarities between the two conductors’ programs don’t end with their nationality. Both opened with a contemporary work making its Philharmonic premiere; both featured late pieces by Richard Strauss; and both ended with music written during, and in the shadow of, World War I.Yet these two weeks at the Philharmonic felt satisfyingly distinct. There may be many Finnish conductors, but there is not a Finnish style of conducting. Mälkki and Rouvali both have an intelligent, even wise sense of shape, but are excellent in their own ways; she is a master of color, he of surprise. And the music they programmed, while superficially similar, differed in sound and scale.The biggest difference was between the two contemporary works. Rouvali’s concert, on Thursday, opened with Julia Wolfe’s “Fountain of Youth” (2019), a nine-minute exclamation that starts percussively, with scratch tones in the strings and scraped washboards. Then the score gradually expands to include the whole orchestra: fluttering, sustained notes in the winds and wailing, animalistic cries in the trombones, as well as stylistic interjections like blues, folk fiddle and rock.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Esa-Pekka Salonen: A Conductor at the Top, and at a Crossroads

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      Salonen, who will soon be a free agent for the first time in decades, could do pretty much anything at this stage. What will it be?On a late afternoon in May, pop and classical music luminaries gathered in the neo-Gothic sanctuary of a 19th-century church-turned-Soho House in Stockholm. With drinks in hand, they listened as the media personality Cilla Benkö asked Esa-Pekka Salonen, “So what’s going on in your head at the moment?”“Well, I’m at a crossroads,” said Salonen, the composer and conductor, who is a year away from becoming a free agent for the first time in decades. “I’m kind of figuring out what to do, if anything.”Salonen is in a good position to choose what comes next. He is a conductor at the top of his field, and the kind of composer who can bring on not just one high-profile commissioner but several for each new piece he writes. The day after his interview with Benkö, he received the Polar Music Prize, an honor that has been called the Nobel Prize of music, directly from the hands of the Swedish king.Salonen, center, rehearsing with the San Francisco Symphony in 2022. The announcement that he would leave when his contract is up in 2025 came as a surprise.Ulysses Ortega for The New York TimesThe award is given to a classical and a pop artist annually; Salonen’s counterpart was Nile Rodgers, the mind behind songs like “We Are Family” and “Le Freak” and albums by Madonna, David Bowie and Beyoncé. Guests at the ceremony included the royal family, the megaproducer Max Martin and a member of ABBA, all gathered for a televised evening of tributes and black-tie diners dancing in the aisles to music related to the prize winners.With royalty grooving to Daft Punk but also listening attentively to Salonen’s “Concert Étude for Solo Horn,” it was a fitting celebration for Salonen, one of the most open-minded, open-eared and fundamentally cool artists in classical music, who at 66 is beloved and respected across the field.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More