This week's Minnesota Orchestra-Osmo Vänskä collaboration, which debuted Thursday in a distressingly depopulated Orchestra Hall, marshals four important "French" composers, who together remind us just how unenlightening such national labels are. ("American" is perhaps the shiftiest label of all, but that's a topic for another day.) Camille Saint-Saëns and Olivier Messiaen, to choose the earliest and latest of Thursday's quartet, may have spoken the same language and carried the same passport, but their musical universes scarcely intersect.

Begin with Messiaen, whose centennial will be celebrated in December. In a style compounded of eroticism and mystical Catholicism, Asian rhythmic patterns and birdsong, the composer seeks to conjure eternity from temporality. His early (1932-33) "L'Ascension," which closes this week's program, provides a manageably scaled encounter with his singular cosmos. Yet the work also seems calculated to show off an orchestra (recalling Virgil Thomson's wicked remark that Messiaen's music "opens up the heavens and brings down the house"). And indeed the orchestra reached incandescence Thursday, although I remember Leopold Stokowski's recordings of "L'Ascension" as even more fervid than Vänskä's reading.

Messiaen was a lad of 13 when Saint-Saëns died in 1921. Over a long career, the prolific and polymathic Saint-Saëns went from progressive to reactionary without ever taking full possession of his prodigious gifts. His engaging yet brittle G-minor Piano Concerto, "polystylistic" before the term was coined, distills the problem: The piece, as one waggish writer put it, "begins like Bach and ends like Offenbach."

Jie Chen, who in 2004 captured the grand prize at the second International Piano e-Competition with this orchestra on this stage, offered a deliciously poised performance of the concerto, distinguished by limpid tone. In the effervescent middle movement, marked by chamber-like exchanges with the orchestra, she found a carefree swing that would tickle the sensibility of any Parisian boulevardier. And she rose above the Presto's manic tarantella.

Debussy had no use for Saint-Saëns, whom he found scholastic. But he had a use for money, which is why in 1904 he accepted a commission from the firm of Pleyel for a piece that would display the capabilities of its new chromatic harp. Though tagged as minor, the resulting "Sacred and Profane Dances," played Thursday on a dulcet instrument by the marvelous Kathy Kienzle, get under the skin.

The concert began with a vigorous, rigorous account of Ravel's Spanish-flavored "Alborada del gracioso."

Larry Fuchsberg writes frequently about music.