Mäkelä & Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra

It has been 26 years since the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra was a guest at the Brucknerhaus Linz. Now "the world's greatest orchestra" (Grammophone Magazine) is returning - and with a bang: On the one hand, Klaus Mäkelä - designated chief conductor of the orchestra as well as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra - an absolutely exceptional artist and one of the most sought-after conductors in the world at the moment is celebrating his debut in Linz; on the other hand, he is joined by two outstanding singers, soprano Jennifer Johnston and bass-baritone Gerald Finley, to bring Béla Bartók's one-act opera Bluebeard's Castle to the stage of the Great Hall in concert form. "The castle is old, and so is the legend that goes with it. Listen now, listen." Thus begins the prologue to the work, whose eerily shimmering narrative about the seven locked doors of Bluebeard's castle, whose secrets his wife Judith is trying to fathom, Bartók clothed in overwhelming sounds using every trick in the book. The first half of the concert with Antonín Dvořák's 7th Symphony in D minor, a work that, according to the composer himself, "must have the power to move the whole world", lures us into this fairytale world of sound.