Review: Minnesota Orchestra returns with 'Resurrection'

It seemed an appropriate choice for the start of the Minnesota Orchestra's 111th season: Mahler's "Resurrection" Symphony, the Symphony No. 2, an 85-minute, five-movement search for the meaning of life, with its apocalyptic visions of heaven and hell.

Past music directors have used the work to make big statements. Edo de Waart opened his 1989-90 season with it, and his successor, Eiji Oue, used it as his farewell to the orchestra in 2002. The performance that Osmo Vänskä conducted at Orchestra Hall on Friday night, in a program titled "A Grand New Beginning," carried even more weight and expectation. It suggested Vänskä and the orchestra have been resurrected from the abyss of a bitter 16-month lockout that until its resolution in late January of this year threatened the orchestra.

Not surprisingly, spirits ran high Friday night. Sipping free champagne in the lobby before the concert, audience members listened as musicians and staff read a proclamation from Gov. Mark Dayton naming Friday "Minnesota Orchestra Day in the State of Minnesota."

Conductors get pegged for their specialties. In many cases, it's simply repertoire they're asked to do more often than others and that audiences come to expect from them. For Vänskä, the symphonies of Sibelius and Beethoven have been hallmarks — less so the works of Mahler. Given the power, command and lucidity of the performance he conducted Friday night, highlighted by superb playing from the orchestra and remarkably skillful singing from the 140-voice Minnesota Chorale and the two soloists, one can only hope Mahler becomes another of his specialties.

The success of the evening was partly a matter of Vänskä's trademark close attention to the details of the score — the carefully wrought portamento (sliding between notes) from the strings in the first movement, the wistful delicacy of the country dance in the second movement, and the shrewdly gauged tempo transitions. Then there was the wild finale with its percussion earthquakes and startling changes of mood and pace, and beyond that, the soft purr of the choral entrance, the childlike wonder of mezzo Adriana Zabala's singing of the ethereal Urlicht movement and soprano Linh Kauffman's radiant high notes.

Cellist Alisa Weilerstein's virtuosic account of Samuel Barber's Cello Concerto in the first half set the tone for a memorable evening.