"In addition, Thursday’s performance was the Met debut of the brilliant Finnish conductor Susanna Malkki, who becomes, amazingly, only the fourth woman to take the podium in the company’s history … This production is lucky to have the impressive Ms. Malkki conducting. All the modernist sonorities and layered strands in this dense, complex music come through. She is excellent at animating the buzzing, frenetic riffs and fleeting ostinatos that ripple through the score. It was only last year that this charismatic conductor, then 46, made her auspicious New York Philharmonic debut. The Met must have her back as often as possible.”