Christmas Matinee

Klaus Mäkelä conducts the Concertgebouw Orchestra’s Christmas Matinee. This festive tradition has been a landmark of the Concertgebouw Orchestra’s season for almost fifty years. The Christmas Matinees conducted by Bernard Haitink and broadcast in dozens of countries during the 1970s and 80s have achieved legendary status. As one would expect, the Christmas Matinee has always been the exclusive domain of the Concertgebouw Orchestra’s chief conductor or – on rare occasions – a highly regarded guest. This year, on 25 December, Klaus Mäkelä, our artistic partner and future principal conductor, will take the lead for the second time, following his phenomenal substitute appearance two years ago during the pandemic. Then as now, Klaus Mäkelä proved his credentials as an excellent Beethoven conductor; this time, he will take on Beethoven’s Third Symphony, the ‘Eroica’.

Beethoven's ‘Eroica’

Felix Mendelssohn’s popular overture, The Hebrides, will also grace the programme, along with his rarely performed concert aria, Infélice. The superb soloist, Chen Reiss, will also sing Hero und Leander the ‘dramatic scene,’ by Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, a composer whose music has started to posthumously emerge from the shadow of her famous brother, Felix. In fact, this will be the first time the Concertgebouw Orchestra performs one of her works; attention to her lush style of composition is therefore long overdue. ‘We wanted to form one composition using the works by Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn,’ says Klaus Mäkelä.