Klaus Mäkelä will be awarded the Sibelius Prize 2022 on 4 November at a special concert with Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra. The award is endowed by the Sibelius Society in Norway for outstanding efforts to promote contact between Finnish and Norwegian musical life.

“From the start of his collaboration with the Oslo Philharmonic (OFO), Mäkelä has shown a clear program profile, not least with his obvious interest in contemporary music,“ said Stephan Barratt-Due, chairman of the Sibelius Society in Norway. ​“A number of Finnish and Norwegian contemporary works have been performed under his direction in recent seasons. With the Oslo Philharmonic, he has also recorded all of the symphonies of Sibelius … As a result of Klaus Mäkelä’s involvement in Oslo, a unique Finnish-Norwegian collaboration has arisen which so obviously ties our two countries together more strongly in the field of music.”

Following the special prize concert on 4 November at Oslo Konserthus, Mäkelä and Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra embark on their second European tour of the year, which sees them return to Elbphilharmonie Hamburg (14 November) and Konzerthaus Wien (20 November) – where they performed the complete Sibelius symphony cycle in residency earlier this year. Their autumn tour also takes them to Munich, Antwerp and Dortmund in programmes featuring works by Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Tchaikovsky and Sibelius.