music

It started with a remark at dinner. Osmo Vänskä told New York Times critic James Oestrich last December that he wanted the Minnesota Orchestra to be one of the nation's very best "in four or five years."

Gramophone, the classical music source based in London, picked up the question of ranking days later online and provoked a lively thread of chat about the orchestra's flexibility and power, its nimble grace and texture. One contributor said the conversation was merely entertaining speculation "without knowing what Vänskä himself thinks."

Maestro?

"Very high," said Vänskä, when asked recently how he would rank the orchestra. Now starting his fifth season as music director, Vänskä demurred from joining in the "We're No. 1!" debate, saying only that his musicians are playing very well right now.

"If we are doing every concert as well as possible, then there is progress, and the orchestra is better than it was one year ago, or two years ago," he said.

These are days of unbounded optimism at Orchestra Hall. Board chairman Paul Grangaard has called this a "New Golden Age," and the moniker is not without justification.

Ticket and subscription sales to classical series are up 4 percent over the past three years after several flat years. September concerts this year were up 20 percent from a year ago. Musicians are thrilled with a new five-year pact, approved in early October, that elevates their minimum annual scale to $120,016 by 2012.

A building expansion and $90 million capital campaign will be launched within the next year. Reviewers and audiences have lauded the orchestra's Beethoven recordings as revelatory; tours have been received enthusiastically with critical approbation.

The cornerstone of this success is Vänskä, entering the first year of a new contract of his own, one that keeps him in Minnesota until 2011.

"Everyone loves Vänskä," said Tim Page, classical music critic at the Washington Post. "I wish we got to hear him more; I'm very envious."

The conditions are ripe for greatness, though it is difficult to imagine Vänskä putting it in those terms. His self-effacing modesty and Scandinavian work ethic both teach him that without gritty and focused process, the prize is unattainable.

"There is a not a drop of casualness in the way he spends his time with the orchestra," said concertmaster Jorja Fleezanis, who has been here since 1989. "He will be generous and I think he's gotten more relaxed with the orchestra, but it's work from the beginning to the end. And to play with the kind of precision that is at the highest level of orchestra playing, there is no other way to do this.

"Honestly, the way the orchestra is playing is such that, for me, these are some of the most gratifying years of my professional life."

Discipline and texture are key

Vänskä arrived here from his native Finland in 2003, at a time when the Minnesota Orchestra had fallen off the map nationally and internationally. His reputation rested largely on his tenure at the Lahti Symphony Orchestra, a provincial group that he elevated to international attention. He also drew positive attention at the BBC Scottish Symphony in Glasgow from 1997 to 2002.

Among his greatest accomplishments at Lahti were definitive interpretations of Jean Sibelius, recorded with the Swedish label BIS. In Minnesota, he announced that he would reengage BIS, this time with all nine Beethoven symphonies. Three CDs have been issued and the orchestra will complete the cycle in January. Rob Suff, the BIS producer of the Beethoven cycle, said it reveals a key to understanding Vänskä.

"He is always very mindful to go back to the score," said Suff. "He doesn't listen to other recordings, and he has a very literal way of interpreting things."

Suff also said he has seen the Minnesota grow every time he records the group.