News : Susanna Mälkki Could be First Woman Music Director of NY Philharmonic

Mälkki made her New York Philharmonic debut on May 21, 2015. When she made her Metropolitan Opera debut in December 2016, she was just the fourth woman conductor of a company that started in 1883.

“At first meeting, she can seem somewhat reserved, but she obviously is very passionate about her performance and about music,” Met general manager Peter Gelb said. “She may have the surface dryness or wryness of other Finnish artists I have known, but her passion quickly comes out when she’s on the podium.”

Mälkki is among five woman conductors at the Met this season. She is one of 21 to lead the Philharmonic, including four so far this season.

“I know for me as a woman, it’s extremely meaningful to have somebody on the podium who reflects my identity, and I feel that every time we work with a woman conductor,” Sterrett said. “So I think that as you see people breaking through, it just changes the whole dialogue around us. It changes the paradigm.”

Deborah Borda, who returned to the New York Philharmonic as CEO in 2017 after 17 seasons as CEO in Los Angeles, hired Mälkki as principal guest conductor. “She has a very powerful and quiet charisma and what she brings is an emotional as well as intellectual connection to the music that is really unique,” Borda said.

Borda tries to say little publicly about the music director search.

’It’s a very delicate procedure,” she said. “There are obviously various stakeholders involved within our community, but the guests, as well, and it is so important that we protect the confidentiality and sanctity of the process.”

Typical of conductors, Mälkki leads a peripatetic life. She has homes in Paris, where she keeps her scores, and in Finland. “Helsinki is good because I grew up there, My parents are there. It’s nice to have a pied-à-terre in Helsinki, but Paris is definitely home,” she said.

She will be back in New York in May to conduct Stravinsky’s “The Rake’s Progress,” and is signed-up for Beethoven’s “Fidelio” in a future season and Kaija Saariaho’s “Innocence” in 2025-26 after leading its world premiere last summer at Aix-en-Provence, France. She conducts Berg’s “Wozzeck” at the Paris Opera in March.

Known for her interest in late 20th century and contemporary compositions, she has committed to future performances of Puccini’s “Il Trittico,” Debussy’s “Pelléas et Mélisande” and Janácek’s “The Makropulos Case,’ and hopes in the future to lead Puccini’s “La Bohème” and Wagner’s Ring Cycle and “Tristan und Isolde.”

“It’s a shift that’s been actually sort of intended and planned already some time ago,” she said. “I’ve been speaking about my interest for opera and there have been more and more invitations. And then I’ve just been grabbing everything, and it’s really exciting. I love working with singers. There’s something of a storytelling quality that I love. I guess I can even say that I somehow identify myself with the singers. I would love to be one of them.”