United States Various: Yunchan Lim (piano), Chicago Symphony Orchestra / Klaus Mäkelä (conductor). Orchestra Hall, Chicago, 20.12.2025. (ZC)
Unsuk Chin – subito con forza
Robert Schumann – Piano Concerto in A minor
Jörg Widmann – Con brio
Beethoven – Symphony No.7 in A major
Last October, on vacation in Amsterdam, I slipped into the Concertgebouw to hear Klaus Mäkelä lead the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. He had not yet assumed his full duties as music director there, but the relationship already felt settled and purposeful. The program paired Andrew Norman’s Play with Richard Strauss’s Don Juan and Der Rosenkavalier waltzes, a combination that showed both Mäkelä’s ambition and his curiosity. Norman’s sprawling, high-voltage score came off better than expected; the Strauss, lush and heroic by nature, felt less fully shaped. Still, the concert offered a useful snapshot of a conductor in the midst of defining himself, drawn to contrasts and willing to take risks.
This week, Mäkelä brought a similar philosophy to Orchestra Hall, standing before the Chicago Symphony, another orchestra he is soon to lead. Once again, old and new were placed in proximity. Robert Schumann and Beethoven formed the spine of the program, flanked by two modern works: Unsuk Chin’s subito con forza and Jörg Widmann’s Con brio – both receiving Chicago Symphony premieres. The effect was not novelty for its own sake but a deliberate attempt to focus Beethoven’s familiar music through a modern lens.
The evening’s centerpiece was Schumann’s Piano Concerto, with Yunchan Lim as soloist. Lim, the South Korean pianist who became the youngest winner of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 2022, has quickly transformed early acclaim into global fame. His victory performance of Rachmaninoff’s Third Concerto that year rightly marked Lim as a musician of rare command, but Schumann asks for something different in his concerto. The work has a restless spirit, its drama turned inward. It is also lopsided: the piano dominates, while the orchestra acts less as an equal partner than as a responsive, almost confessional presence.
Lim proved an ideal guide. In the concerto’s more extroverted passages, he dispatched the figurations with power and clarity, never sounding rushed. What lingered longer were the quieter moments. Here, Lim moved through Schumann’s phrases with a kind of poetic patience, letting lines breathe and dissolve. Mäkelä and the Chicago Symphony were attentive partners. The exchanges between Lim and the wind players had the intimacy of chamber music, a balanced conversation rather than a contest for attention. Lim lived up to his reputation but, more importantly, he suggested an interpretive depth that goes beyond youthful brilliance.
The program’s surprises came at its edges. Chin and Widmann, both European modernists, write music that largely sidesteps traditional tonality and melody in favor of abstraction and gesture. Chin’s subito con forza opened the first half with a jolt. Its opening gesture echoes Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture, a reference that quickly fractures into a barrage of color and texture. Over the next five minutes, the orchestra seemed to detonate continuously, with Beethoven’s presence felt everywhere without ever fully materializing.
Widmann’s Con brio, which opened the second half, continued the conversation. Now one of the most frequently performed works of the twenty-first century, it channels Beethoven’s energy without quoting him directly. Widmann calls for an array of extended techniques: winds breathing into their instruments to create ghostly, colorless sounds and other effects that rub against more traditional playing. The result is a kind of modern fury, full of pulse and momentum. Mäkelä kept the tension taut, allowing the work’s Beethovenian drive to carry the audience forward rather than overwhelm it.
Beethoven’s Symphony No.7 closed the program. Conducting without a score, Mäkelä shaped a performance that was both driven and carefully weighted, its energy tightly coiled from the opening bars. He had a firm grasp of the symphony’s pulse, not just in the outer movements but in the second movement as well, whose steady, dirge-like tread unfolded with a grim and beautiful patience, accumulating weight until it felt almost inexorable. In the finale, he pressed ahead with abandon, urging the music forward as the orchestra responded with precision and force. The playing took on a steely intensity that swept the hall, bringing the audience to its feet the instant the final notes landed.
There was much to admire in the evening, and more than a hint of what the future may hold under Mäkelä’s leadership. Though the Beethoven thrilled, it was the Robert Schumann that lingered. Lim’s feeling for the music was unmistakable, confirmed by a generous encore – Chopin’s Waltz in A minor, Op.34 No.2. Just as striking was Mäkelä’s sensitivity at the podium and the orchestra’s willingness to meet him there. His ease and evident pleasure in collaboration may be the most encouraging sign of all as he prepares to take the helm of two of the world’s great musical institutions.
Zach Carstensen
Featured Image: Klaus Mäkelä conducts the Chicago Symphony © Todd Rosenberg