Classical music: Osmo Vanska, master builder

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.

"We made the first recording toward the end of Osmo's first season," he said. "On each subsequent visit, it's more apparent Osmo has been working with them. Particularly last year, they were achieving a new level, breathing together, phrasing together, free and natural. The music-making has gotten better and better."

T-shirt and jeans

That fidelity -- which allows a listener to discover new intricacies in old work -- comes from Vänskä's "intense level of integrity," said Fleezanis. Her remark about Vänskä being all business came to mind at the orchestra's first fall rehearsal. His black T-shirt and jeans might have said party, but his demeanor at the podium was terse.

"Good morning," he said. "Holst's 'Planets.'"

He raised his baton and they were off. No chit-chat about vacation. No jokes. Nothing about the marvelous motorcycle ride he'd enjoyed a week before along the Mississippi River. ("You can find some great curves on those roads," he had said in an interview earlier.) No musings on how his favorite hockey team, the Minnesota Wild, might do this year. After a run-through of the first movement, Vänskä began to break it down.

"Ba-bum-ba-bum-ba-bum," he sang, stripping down the sound to a single insistent rhythm before building it back up, first with the harps, then timpani, then strings, in layers of musicality. Even one mistake, he believes, can be very expensive.

"Of course he drives us nuts," said violist Sam Bergman, commenting on the notion that repetition can weary the soul. "But I wish more conductors would take that much time. Osmo believes in a baseline of musicianship -- he knows he doesn't have to teach us how to play. So he focuses on technical aspects, and it pays off."

Discipline provides "a crystal clear plan about what we are going to do," Vänskä said. Only then is the orchestra ready for what he calls "magical moments" defined by precision, color, bravery.

"There are few possibilities to do a miracle just like this," he continued, snapping his fingers in the air. "The miracle is the result of many details, hard work."

'A good place for art'

Vänskä and his wife, Pirkko, live comfortably near the river in downtown Minneapolis. He can walk to work, or to church at Central Lutheran. Restaurants, art museums and theaters are nearby. His other passion, Wild hockey, requires a trip to St. Paul ("You really concentrate on the game; then your brain is ready to take on more stressful things").

"He called me last night about 6 o'clock and said he had a couple tickets to the game," said Bergman one recent morning. The violist declined with the best of excuses. He had to practice.

"This is a totally different orchestra from when I joined 7½ years ago," said Bergman, who played for three years under music director Eiji Oue. "There is a passion for the music, a pride that was not there. Osmo got here and there is always a lift for a year or two when someone new comes in, but it has been a sustained run of success."

Which dances around the question of Vänskä's place in the orchestra's history and how long he might stay?

"I think he is perfectly suited to Minneapolis," said Grangaard, the board chairman. "There is no diva in Osmo. When he meets people, he is humble."

Still, the list of predecessors is not insubstantial. Ormandy, Mitropoulous, Dorati, Scrowaczewski are names that set a high bar of distinguished excellence. For all his success, Vänskä is beginning only his fifth season.

"To me, 10 to 15 years is a beautiful tenure," said Fleezanis. "I would think that in 10 years, we would have a fantastic sense of accomplishment."

Long tenures, though, are not without peril. Scrowaczewski was here 19 years and by the end, it was clear it was time to go, said Bergman. Similarly, Charles Dutoit was at Montreal for 25 years and something went quite wrong at the end. Relationships can go stale. One positive sign is that Vänskä has been at Lahti for 20 years and "people still like him," said Bergman.

With a new president in Michael Henson, arriving in February, the capital campaign and the anticipation of the final Beethoven recording session, Vänskä faces enough challenge and room to grow in Minnesota, to feed his healthy sense of duty.

"I'm sure the National Symphony Orchestra would steal him in a second," said Page of the current opening in Washington. But Vänskä sounds like a man who has no plans to move on.

He talks about how much he likes this corner of America, how much of Finland he sees in the trees and lakes, the Scandinavian work ethic and the civic life. If he has succeeded with the orchestra, one senses he is content and grateful rather than brimming with pride.

"The Twin Cities are a very good place for art and for human beings," he said. "Wondering how long you will be in a place is like wondering how long are you going to live. It's not in our hands."

Fleezanis, who has worked with three previous music directors at Minnesota, feels that Vänskä is building an institution that extends beyond what appears onstage -- what she calls an organic organization.

"He is a get-his-hands-dirty director who is trying to galvanize all the components of the Minnesota Orchestra, down to the ticket people, the marketing people," said Fleezanis. "That has made me believe that when he leaves, many people will have been touched by him. And that's pretty rare in the orchestral world, among music directors."

Graydon Royce • 612-673-7299

Graydon Royce • groyce@startribune.com