Much of life is about risk. Weighing up the odds and balancing such risk is the mainstay of human existence. It keeps us hungry and eager to learn more. Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra thrives on taking risks, seeking out tomorrow’s classics for audiences anew. But risk is not restricted to that which is new. Risk can be your new chief conductor designate conducting opera with the orchestra for the first time. And then taking it on tour across Europe to a series of venues, each with their own distinctly unique acoustics. Adding last week’s offering, Mahler’s fickle Seventh Symphony into the mix, increases the excitement.
The programme
Bartók’s Bluebeard Castle
The chosen opera, Bartók’s Bluebeard Castle performed at the Concertgebouw on Thursday night, reunited the maestro’s 2024 Oslo Philharmonic cast of British mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnston as Judith and Canadian bass-baritone Gerald Finley as the Duke. This was a canny move, and helped mitigate the risk. Mäkelä’s taut, highly dramatic reading is one you may want to see again and again, such is its ability to ask the difficult questions: What is the true nature of love? And what will you sacrifice in pursuit of the truth?
Bartók’s one act opera based on a play by Béla Balázs which itself references the 1697 book of fairytales by French author Charles Perrault (author also of Little Red Riding Hood and Sleeping Beauty) has just two characters. Their love seems real. Johnson’s Judith, a mature, confident woman, has not been lured into his castle. Instead, she has come of her own volition, choosing to embrace the darkness and ‘warm this icy marble’. Yet her forceful request to open the doors sets the tone.
Bartók’s hugely challenging, yet wonderfully descriptive writing tests singers and orchestra alike. At the sight of blood-stained weapons, Johnston’s dark stoicism penetrated Bartók’s thick orchestration. Likewise, Finley reserved the depths of his deadly lower register for cold admission as to the fate of his previous wives, referring to Judith in the past.
© Eduardus Lee
In the hands of Klaus Mäkelä, Bartók’s colourful score found intriguing heights. Rattling skeletons, sighing walls and strumming harps to calm the shivering waters filled the auditorium. The oft angular vocabulary softened, like the fragrant flowers deep within the castle’s secret walls.
Unfolding drama
However, it was the gripping drama which kept me pinned to my seat. Subtle body language shifts, reflecting disbelief and disappointment at unfolding events, mirrored by acts of resilience and unshaken resolve, kept eyes firmly fixed.
Dvorak’s colourful Seventh Symphony before the interval as the finale’s intrepid explorer wrestled with the might of a gruesome trombone, had given moments of deep, dark sadness. Now in Bartók’s Bluebeard, the enhanced might of the Concertgebouw orchestra moved matters up a gear.
As eight additional brass players joined the already enlarged ranks building to Judith’s amazing top C – itself a cry of overwhelming desperation and despair as the vastness of her husband’s noble kingdom is revealed – thoughts turned heavenward with the Duke’s almost liturgical response. Had we instead met the might of an all-conquering God, and not just the Duke of an earthly realm?
Thursday’s concert felt personal. In this, the final season before Mäkelä officially takes the reins as only the eighth chief conductor in the orchestra’s 138-year history, do we have a clearer indication of things to come?
Will we see more opera?
Will Mäkelä join the RCO on the Dutch National Opera podium each June to recreate the magic of Barrie Kosky’s June 2026 Festival d’Aix-en-Provence production of Richard Strauss’ Die Frau ohne Schatten for audiences here in Amsterdam?
Could this become the hottest ticket in town? If so, this was definitely a risk worth taking!
Clare reviewed this concert at the Concertgebouw on Thursday 5th November, 2026
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