CHICAGO — It takes nothing from the greatness of our longest-lived symphony orchestra conductors to appreciate the difference a generation (or two or three) can make.
Former Chicago Symphony Orchestra music director Riccardo Muti, now 83, was appointed to that post in 2010 and gave some of his most powerful concerts in his final (12th and 13th) seasons at the ensemble’s helm. The Italian maestro was named music director emeritus for life in June 2023, nearly a year before the CSO announced the baton will pass to Finnish conductor Klaus Mäkelä, who turns 29 in January 2025, Muti’s junior by more than half a century.
Mäkelä’s five-year term as music director does not begin until September 2027, but he’s expected to appear in Chicago with increasing frequency, and one suspects it is at least partly due to Mäkelä’s influence that the roster of guest artists this season has included brilliant musicians of Mäkelä’s generation.
Among the most impressive of these visitors to date is the Israeli conductor Lahav Shani. The 35-year-old maestro and multi-instrumentalist visited the CSO Dec. 19-21 with a dual purpose: to conduct Brahms’ Symphony No. 1 and to perform as the powerhouse soloist in Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 2 while leading the orchestra from the keyboard.
It was the third CSO engagement for Shani, who looks quite a lot like the young Daniel Barenboim, the CSO’s music director of the 1990s. Like Mäkelä, who is also a cellist, and like Barenboim, who is also a pianist, Shani is a multifaceted talent, in this case a conductor, double-bassist, and pianist, with an enthusiasm for jazz in the bargain.
The last time Shani was in Chicago, he popped off the podium to join guest pianist Beatrice Rana in a four-hand rendition of Tchaikovsky’s “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy,” mimicking the sound of a music box.
And Shani has overlapped with other artists whom the CSO counts as favorites. He was on the podium when pianist Daniil Trifonov performed former CSO composer-in-residence Mason Bates’ new piano concerto earlier in 2024.
But those past feats merely hinted at the clear-eyed mastery of the simultaneous keyboard and leadership challenges the Shostakovich piano concerto required. Would the piece have come off better with a separate conductor and pianist in those roles? Maybe not. For one thing, the pianist and conductor (in the same person!) agreed on interpretive choices in what was a singularly headlong and muscular performance. And given that Shostakovich wrote this concerto for his own son to play, I had no trouble imagining it bursting forth with irrepressible exuberance as Shani played it.
Brahms’ Symphony No. 1 also came off as a younger conductor’s vision, indicative of Shani’s general preference for a more brilliant sound, a more aggressive pulse and a generally faster heartbeat than has been the style of Muti. The music director emeritus will be remembered for the long lines and rarified colors, the thrilling quiet and lingering effects of which the CSO is so capable. As long as I am not asked to forget those other sounds, I am happy to roll with Shani’s drive and brilliance.
Indeed, why would one necessarily expect Shani to hear the same world in Mahler’s Second Symphony that the 87-year-old Estonian conductor Neeme Järvi heard in it with the CSO earlier in 2024? Or the sound world of Brahms’ Second Symphony that Herbert Blomstedt reveled in at age 93 in 2020, with arching phrases that lingered, as if Brahms were lost in thought.
One thinks as well of Muti’s vision, at 82, of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, which closed the CSO season in 2023. Surely each of these conductors would recognize in Shani — in his clarity, conviction, and vigor at 35 — something of their own younger selves.
