Minnesota Orchestra
Orchestras
The Minnesota Orchestra, now in its second century and led by Music Director Osmo Vänskä, ranks among America’s top symphonic ensembles, with a distinguished history of acclaimed performances in its home state and around the world; award-winning recordings, radio broadcasts and educational outreach programs; and a visionary commitment to building the orchestral repertoire of tomorrow.
Founded as the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, the ensemble gave its inaugural performance on November 5, 1903, shortly after baseball’s first World Series and exactly six weeks before the Wright brothers made their unprecedented airplane flight. The Orchestra played its first regional tour in 1907 and made its New York City debut in 1912 at Carnegie Hall, where it has performed regularly ever since. Outside the United States, the Orchestra has played concerts in Australia, Canada, Europe, the Far East, Latin America and the Middle East. Since 1968 it has been known as the Minnesota Orchestra.
The 98-member ensemble now presents nearly 200 programs each year, primarily at its home venue of Orchestra Hall in downtown Minneapolis, and its concerts are heard by live audiences of 400,000 annually. Its Friday night performances are broadcast live regionally by Minnesota Public Radio, and many programs are subsequently featured on American Public Media’s national programs, SymphonyCast and Performance Today.
In the early 1920s, the Minnesota Orchestra became one of the first ensembles to be heard on recordings, as well as on the radio—in 1923 it played a nationally broadcast concert under guest conductor Bruno Walter—and it has been recording and broadcasting ever since. Its landmark Mercury Living Presence LP recordings of the 1950s and 1960s, under music directors Antal Dorati and Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, have been reissued on compact disc to great acclaim.
Under Music Director Osmo Vänskä, the Orchestra has completed a five-year, five-disc initiative to record the complete Beethoven symphonies on the BIS label. The collection has amassed rave reviews, with The New York Times writing that it “may be the definitive [cycle] of our time” and the Financial Times of London praising it as the “modern Beethoven recording par excellence.” The Orchestra’s recording of Beethoven’s Ninth received a 2008 Grammy nomination for “Best Orchestral Performance,” and the CD featuring the Second and Seventh Symphonies was nominated for a 2009 Classic FM Gramophone Award. In 2009 BIS released its newest collaboration with the Orchestra, the premiere recording of To Be Certain of the Dawn, a Holocaust memorial oratorio by Stephen Paulus on a libretto by Michael Dennis Browne.
Vänskä and the Orchestra have recently embarked on a series of new recording initiatives, include a five-year project with BIS to record all five Beethoven piano concertos with Russian pianist Yevgeny Sudbin and, for the Hyperion label, live in-concert recordings of Tchaikovsky’s three piano concertos and Concert Fantasia, recorded over two seasons with British pianist Stephen Hough.
In addition to traditional concerts, the Minnesota Orchestra connects with more than 85,000 music lovers annually through educational programs including Young People’s Concerts (YPs) and Target Free Family Concerts. In the last decade more than half a million students have experienced a Minnesota Orchestra YP. Musicians also engage in such Orchestra-sponsored initiatives as the Adopt-A-School program, Side-by-Side rehearsals and concerts with young area musicians, and the UPbeat program, which establishes multi-year relationships with communities throughout the Twin Cities and around the state.
The ensemble also offers numerous pops concerts, presenting the greatest contemporary pop performers in genres ranging from rock, jazz and Big Band to Latin, country and world music. In 2008, the Orchestra established Jazz at Orchestra Hall, a jazz series featuring top performers from around the nation, and named Irvin Mayfield as the series’ artistic director. American conductor Andrew Litton serves as artistic director for the Orchestra’s beloved urban summer music festival, Sommerfest, which celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2010.
With a long history of commissioning and performing new music, the Minnesota Orchestra continues to nourish a strong commitment to contemporary composers. Since 1903 the Orchestra has premiered and/or commissioned nearly 300 compositions, including works by John Adams, Dominick Argento (Minnesota Orchestra Composer Laureate), Aaron Copland, John Corigliano, Charles Ives, Aaron Jay Kernis (Director of the Orchestra’s Composer Institute), Libby Larsen, Stephen Paulus, Stanislaw Skrowaczewski (Orchestra Conductor Laureate) and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich. In addition, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) has bestowed upon the Orchestra 18 awards for adventuresome programming, including Leonard Bernstein Awards for Education Programming in 2005, 2006 and 2007 and, in 2008, the John S. Edwards Award for Strongest Commitment to New American Music.
The Orchestra welcomed Finnish conductor Osmo Vänskä as its tenth music director in the fall of 2003. Praised for his intense and dynamic performances, Vänskä is recognized for compelling interpretations of the standard, contemporary and Nordic repertoires. During his tenure, he has drawn extraordinary reviews for concerts both at home and abroad, including appearances at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, three European tours—the most recent in February and March 2009—and Minnesota tours in 2005, 2007 and 2008. Vänskä has extended his tenure with the Minnesota Orchestra through 2015.
season 2009/2010
Osmo Vänskä
Music Director
Finnish conductor Osmo Vänskä, who became the Minnesota Orchestra’s tenth music director in September 2003, is renowned for his compelling interpretations of the standard, contemporary and Nordic repertoires.
During his first six seasons in Minnesota, he has drawn acclaim for performances both at home and abroad. In February and March of 2009 he led the Orchestra and guest violinist Joshua Bell on an eight-city European tour that included performances at such venues as the Berlin Philharmonie and the Vienna Musikverein. He has also led the Orchestra in a 2006 tour of major European festivals, a 2004 tour to European music capitals, annual concerts at Carnegie Hall or Lincoln Center in New York, and regular performances in communities around Minnesota.
Highlights of Vänskä’s seventh season in Minnesota include a Stravinsky festival in collaboration with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, performances of Sibelius’ epic symphonic poem Kullervo in both Orchestra Hall and Carnegie Hall, and world premieres of commissioned works by Kalevi Aho, Sally Beamish and Manuel Sosa.
Also this year, Vänskä and the Minnesota Orchestra welcome the release of an album of Bruckner’s Fourth (Romantic) Symphony on the Swedish-based BIS Records label; conclude a project to make live, in-concert recordings of Tchaikovsky’s piano concertos and Concert Fantasia with Stephen Hough, due for release by Hyperion Records in spring 2010; and continue a five-year initiative launched last season, recording all the Beethoven piano concertos with Yevgeny Sudbin for BIS. Over past seasons Vänskä recorded the complete Beethoven symphonies with the Orchestra for BIS, with each album in the five-disc project receiving superlative praise nationally and internationally. Two albums have drawn particular attention: the recording of the Ninth Symphony was nominated for a Grammy Award, while that of the Second and Seventh has received a Classic FM Gramophone Award nomination.
As a guest conductor, Vänskä has appeared with the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood, the Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, National Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra and Pittsburgh Symphony, as well as the major symphonies of Dallas, Detroit, Houston, San Francisco and St. Louis. In Europe, he has led such eminent orchestras as the Berlin Philharmonic, London’s BBC Symphony, the Czech Philharmonic, Helsinki Philharmonic, Leipzig Gewandhaus, London Philharmonic, Orchestre National de France and Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.
During the 2009-10 season he returns for engagements with the San Francisco Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, London Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris and Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, and makes his debut with the New World Symphony in Miami.
For two decades Vänskä was music director of the Lahti Symphony Orchestra, which he transformed into one of Finland’s flagship orchestras. Under his leadership, the Lahti Symphony has received international attention through its collection of innovative Sibelius recordings on the BIS label and its international performances in London, Birmingham and New York. In May 2008 he became that ensemble’s conductor laureate.
Vänskä has recorded extensively on the BIS and Hyperion labels. His Sibelius albums with the Lahti Symphony Orchestra for BIS have amassed numerous awards, including a 1996 Gramophone Award and Cannes Classical Award for the original version of the Fifth Symphony. His first-ever complete recording of The Tempest won the 1993 Prix Académie Charles Cros, and his disc of the original version of the Sibelius Violin Concerto with Leonidas Kavakos won 1991 Gramophone Awards for Record of the Year and Best Concerto Recording.
Vänskä began his music career as a clarinetist, holding the co-principal chair of the Helsinki Philharmonic (1977-82) and the principal chair of the Turku Philharmonic (1971-76). Following conducting studies under Jorma Panula at Finland’s Sibelius Academy, he was awarded first prize in the 1982 Besançon International Young Conductor’s Competition. Three years later he began his tenure with the Lahti Symphony as principal guest conductor, while also serving as music director of the Iceland Symphony Orchestra and the Tapiola Sinfonietta. In addition, Vänskä served as chief conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra of Glasgow (1997-2002).
Since returning to the clarinet at the Orchestra’s 2005 Sommerfest, Vänskä has performed in chamber ensembles at Orchestra Hall, other Twin Cities venues, Napa Valley’s Music in the Vineyards, the Grand Teton Music Festival and the Mostly Mozart Festival in New York. In chamber concerts with Minnesota Orchestra colleagues this season, he is featured in a clarinet quintet by Kalevi Aho on St. Paul’s Music in the Park Series and in a Brahms trio on the Orchestra’s Chamber Music at MacPhail series.
During his time in Minnesota, Vänskä has explored an interest in composition. The Orchestra performed his first orchestral work, Here!...Beyond? in October 2006, and his second work, The Bridge—a response to Minnesota’s I-35W bridge collapse—was heard at a concert in September 2008.
The many honors and distinctions awarded to Vänskä include an honorary doctorate from the University of Glasgow, a privilege given in recognition of his tenure as chief conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony. In May 2002 he was honored with a Royal Philharmonic Society Award for his outstanding contribution to classical music during 2001. In December 2004 Musical America named Vänskä 2005 Conductor of the Year, and in 2008 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Minnesota as well as a Champion of New Music Award from the American Composers Forum.
Vänskä has extended his tenure with the Minnesota Orchestra through 2015.
season 2009/2010
