Minnesota Orchestra plays great music

Since the days of my wife’s and my founding of the Festival of Orchestras, a local public hungry for great symphonic music has often waited for such a night as was March 9, when the Orlando Philharmonic presented the Minnesota Orchestra playing a magnificent concert in the Bob Carr Performing Arts Center.

On March 9, conductor Osmo Vänskä provided solid proof that his orchestra remains one of America's best.

Yes, this is the same Osmo Vänskä who jumped in, in Orlando, and saved the day when the Atlanta Symphony canceled a Festival of Orchestras date at the last moment. Osmo Vänskä and the Iceland Symphony prevented a catastrophe with a sizzling performance of the Sibeius Symphony No. 2.

This time on March 9, Vänskä and his Minnesotans opened with a beautifully played Johannes Brahms' Variations on Theme by Haydn.

Then the orchestra put their hooks into bigger things with the Sibelius Violin Concerto played by the international virtuoso Midori. Midori was admirably clear in her consistently energetic fingering and made Sibelius' most challenging moments seem to be child’s play.

The evening's pièce de résistance came after intermission with the Beethoven Fifth Symphony, a piece which has been played to death without altering the fact that it is an all-time musical masterpiece. I had not heard the Fifth in a year or so, and was quite “floored” by the magnificence of its musical intellectuality, and its overwhelming logic. The Fifth has originality, courage, ahead-of-its-time musical ideas and enormous melodic beauty. Had Beethoven written nothing else but this piece, he would be acknowledged as a supreme genius.

Vänskä and his forces played as a single awesome musical intelligence.

The cheering audience gave voluble thanks to the program’s sponsors, The Edyth Bush Charitable Foundation Inc., plus one generous anonymous donor.