The Berlin Philharmonic and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam have been on tour in the US. The two ensembles are leading contenders in symphonic music’s favorite parlor game: Identifying the world’s greatest orchestra. As they performed a few days apart in Washington and New York, another round of the game – a championship playoff – was inevitable.
A leading referee, Alex Ross, music critic of The New Yorker, weighs in on the two orchestras and their conductors, Kirill Petrenko, who has led the Berliners since 2019, and Klaus Mäkelä, slated to take over at the Concertgebouw (and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra) in 2027.
As to their conductors’ contrasting personas, Ross writes, “Mäkelä’s swaggering charisma is not to be denied, even if it leaves some of us cold. . . . Petrenko is tracing a different path, one that young conductors should emulate. His charisma is indistinguishable from that of the orchestra itself.”
For most of his essay, Ross concentrates on the orchestras themselves – as collective music-makers, whose tonal and stylistic characters have been honed over more than a century:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/12/16/the-berlin-philharmonic-doesnt-need-a-maestro