The Finnish saga continues at the Orchestre de Paris, which announced on Tuesday, September 2, that Esa-Pekka Salonen, 67, will succeed conductor Klaus Mäkelä, 29, for a five-year term when Mäkelä's tenure ends at the close of the 2026-2027 season. Nearly two generations separate the pair, who both hail from Helsinki, and the French orchestra can take pride in having attracted and secured both. Salonen, one of the 10 most sought-after conductors of the past several decades, has long been on the radar of Parisian orchestras, especially that of the Opéra de Paris, which courted him for many years (he conducted Wagner's Tristan, staged by video artist Bill Viola, there, in April 2005).

Yet it was the Philharmonie that managed to win over the maestro, who is also a composer, by playing a major card: In addition to the role of principal conductor of the Orchestre de Paris (Salonen did not wish to take on the significant managerial responsibilities of music director), he will hold the Creativity and Innovation Chair at the Philharmonie de Paris.

The formalization of this new partnership was no accident. The Finnish conductor has maintained close ties with France since the late 1990s, whether as a guest conductor (with the Orchestre de Paris as early as 1988, the Ensemble Intercontemporain and the Opéra de Paris) or at the helm of his own ensembles, such as the Philharmonia Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, for which he has been the music director since 2020 and will leave this season, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He will return to the LA-based orchestra in 2026, after having led it from 1992 to 2009, to succeed Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel, who has been appointed to lead the New York Philharmonic.

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