Klaus Mäkelä conducts Ravel, Bartók, and Connesson — With Emily Beynon and Ivan Podyomov

Years ahead of his accession to the post of Chief Conductor in 2027, the unstoppable Klaus Mäkelä has already developed an incredible rapport with the world-renowned Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, which you can hear in every note of this colorful program spotlighting two of the RCO's excellent soloists in new concertos by French composer Guillaume Connesson!

First up, in honor of Ravel's 150th birthday in 2025, is his Shéhérazade overture, an early foray into exoticism influenced by Rimsky-Korsakov that remained unpublished until 1975. Next up are the Dutch premieres of two wind concertos by the ingenious Connesson, known for his skill in orchestral writing and the cinematic scope of his work: Les belles heures, featuring RCO principal oboist Ivan Podyomov, and Danses concertantes, written specially for RCO principal flautist Emily Beynon. The program closes out with music from Bartók's bold and richly orchestrated The Miraculous Mandarin, a ballet that met with scandal, uproar, and censure on its 1926 premiere but whose provocative score found success as an orchestral suite later in Bartók's lifetime.

Klaus Mäkelä appears courtesy of Decca Classics. Click here to discover Klaus Mäkelä's releases on Decca Classics, including a new Stravinsky album with the Orchestre de Paris.