Biographies Annual Gala

Klaus Mäkelä has held the position of chief conductor of the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra since 2020 and music director of Orchestre de Paris since 2021. In 2022 the Concertgebouw Orchestra announced that he will assume the title of chief conductor in September 2027. In the same season the Finnish conductor will commence as music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. 

An exclusive Decca Classics artist, he has recorded the Ballets Russes music of Debussy and Stravinsky with Orchestre de Paris. With the Oslo Philharmonic he has released the complete Sibelius Symphonies, as well as Sibelius and Prokofiev violin concertos with Janine Jansen. 

With the Oslo Philharmonic, Mäkelä toured Japan, South Korea and Taiwan and gave guest performances in Hamburg, Amsterdam, Paris and Vienna. Shostakovich continues as a main composer focus in Mäkelä’s fifth season in Oslo. With a focus on French composers and new works, Mäkelä’s fourth season at the Orchestre de Paris will see guest performances across Europe and a return to Asia in June 2025. 

His outstanding debut in September 2020 prompted the Concertgebouw Orchestra to invite him back four times within two years. As artistic partner, Mäkelä closely collaborates with the orchestra in a variety of programmes during the 2024-25 season, including Mahler’s Symphonies No. 1 and 8, the Christmas Matinee and the Annual Gala concert. An extensive tour of the United States is scheduled for November 2024. 

As a guest conductor, in 2024-25 Klaus Mäkelä will return to the Berliner Philharmoniker and The Cleveland Orchestra. He will also make his first appearance with the Vienna Philharmonic. 

As a cellist Mäkelä partners with members of the Oslo Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris and Concertgebouw Orchestra for occasional programmes and each summer performs at the Verbier Festival. 

Mäkelä studied conducting at the Sibelius Academy with Jorma Panula and cello with Marko Ylönen, Timo Hanhinen and Hannu Kiiski.

Considered one of the greatest violinists in the world, Janine Jansen has undertaken multiple tours with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, namely of Spain and the US in 2010, Berlin (on a state visit) in April 2011, China and Korea in February 2012, South Africa in March 2013 and again China in 2017.

Jansen has returned to make frequent guest appearances since her double Concertgebouw Orchestra debut in December 2004, when she performed both the Britten Violin Concerto and the Prokofiev Violin Concerto No. 2. She appeared as soloist with the Concertgebouw Orchestra in the 2014 world premiere of Michel van der Aa’s Violin Concerto.

Jansen served as the orchestra’s artist in residence in the 2020–21 season, an appointment that was largely eclipsed by the coronavirus pandemic. She joined forces with a number of musicians from the orchestra to perform Stravinsky’s Histoire du soldat in May 2021. Jansen most recently collaborated with the Concertgebouw Orchestra in a performance of Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 4, K 218 under the direction of Herbert Blomstedt in January 2023.

She has also made solo appearances with such orchestras as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, and the Berlin and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestras.

The violinist enjoys performing chamber music with musical colleagues including Leif Ove Andsnes, Martin Fröst, Itamar Golan, Mischa Maisky and Julian Rachlin. Jansen hosted her own festival dedicated to Bach’s music at the Concertgebouw in March 2024.

She has won a number of awards, including four Edisons, four Echo Klassik Awards, the 2008 Classical Music Prize of the Association of Theatres and Concert Hall Management Boards (VSCD), the 2009 Instrumentalist Award of the Royal Philharmonic Society, the 2013 Concertgebouw Prize and the 2018 Johannes Vermeer Prize.

Jansen studied with Coosje Wijzenbeek, Philippe Hirschhorn and Boris Belkin. She plays the ‘Shumsky-Rode’ Stradivarius, built in 1715.