This weekend's Minnesota Orchestra opener has special meaning

This weekend the Minnesota Orchestra and its conductor, Osmo Vänskä, will open the 2014-15 season with Gustav Mahler's Second Symphony, the Resurrection, plus an American work to begin each concert, Samuel Barber's Cello Concerto.

Headlined as "A Grand New Beginning," Vänskä's careful choice of Mahler's Resurrection Symphony not only has special meaning for this weekend's concerts but in the orchestra's history.

The Barber Cello Concerto, with Alisa Weilerstein as soloist, displays the distinction of American classical music and the stunning quality of America's musicians, epitomized in Weilerstein and members of the Minnesota Orchestra now rebounding from a difficult 16-month lockout.

Mahler's sprawling Resurrection Symphony carries double meanings for the Minnesota Orchestra. Its themes of rebirth and beauty obviously signal the Minnesota Orchestra's resilience, recovery, and resurgence in these times. But also, almost 80 years ago, in 1934 and 1935, the Resurrection Symphony became the spectacular vehicle through which the orchestra's predecessor, the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, trumpeted its arrival in American classical music.

Most conductors and orchestras avoided Mahler in the 1920s and '30s, especially his Resurrection Symphony, because it required a huge orchestra plus chorus and soprano and contralto soloists. Yet for the Minneapolis Symphony's 1934-35 season, its young, indeed brash conductor, Eugene Ormandy, only in his fourth season with the symphony, not only programmed it but pushed the RCA Victor Company to record it, producing the Resurrection Symphony's first electrical recording anywhere.

Performed at the University of Minnesota's Northrop Auditorium on Friday, Dec. 7, 1934, and recorded there live by RCA Victor at a second concert in January, 1935, the Minneapolis Symphony's Resurrection Symphony shouted the far Midwest's achievement in classical music to the world — on 11 heavy 78 rpm shellac disks. Joined by the 350-voice Twin City Symphony Chorus directed by Rupert Sircom and by two local soloists, Corinne Frank Bowen, soprano, and Ann O'Malley Gallogly, contralto, the Minneapolis Symphony made more than recording history. Critics praised Ormandy's conducting and the Minneapolis Symphony's playing.

Indeed, their distinction has lasted so long that this nearly 80-year-old performance is still easily available — on iTunes no less!

Jon Butler, an American historian and past Dean of the Yale University Graduate School, lives in Minneapolis.