Osmo Vänskä
Osmo Vänskä, who in 2003 became the Minnesota Orchestra's 10th Music Director, is recognized for his compelling interpretations of the standard, contemporary, and Nordic repertoires. During his Minnesota tenure, he has drawn acclaim for performances at home and abroad, including concert tours to European music capitals in 2004 and 2009, a tour of major European festivals in 2006, and numerous performances throughout Minnesota. Mr. Vänskä has recorded the complete Beethoven symphonies with the orchestra for the Swedish label BIS in a five-year, five-disc cycle, with each album garnering superlative international reviews and two—one of the Ninth Symphony and one of the Second and Seventh—receiving Grammy and Classic FM Gramophone award nominations, respectively. He and the orchestra have launched several additional recording projects, among which are cycles of the complete Beethoven piano concertos with Yevgeny Sudbin and of Tchaikovsky's
piano-and-orchestra works with Stephen Hough.
As a guest conductor, Mr. Vänskä has led all the major American orchestras, as well as European and Asian ensembles, including the Berliner Philharmoniker, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestre national de France, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra. Mr. Vänskä began his music career as a clarinetist, holding major posts with orchestras in his native Finland. For two decades, he was music director of the Lahti Symphony Orchestra, which he transformed into one of Finland's flagship orchestras, attracting worldwide attention for performances and for award-winning Sibelius recordings on the BIS label. By 2008, when he was named Lahti's conductor laureate, he had also completed a five-year tenure as chief conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra of Glasgow. Since arriving in Minnesota, he has again taken up his original instrument, performing as a clarinetist in chamber ensembles at Orchestra Hall, other Twin Cities venues, Napa Valley's Music in the Vineyards, the Grand Teton Music Festival, and the Mostly Mozart Festival, where he also conducts each summer. Mr. Vänskä has extended his tenure with the Minnesota Orchestra through 2015.
Minnesota Orchestra
The Minnesota Orchestra is recognized for its distinguished performances around the world, award-winning recordings, radio broadcasts, and commitment to building the repertoire of the future. Founded as the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra in 1903, the ensemble played its first regional tour in 1907, debuted at Carnegie Hall in 1912, and has returned for regular New York performances ever since. The orchestra, known since 1968 as the Minnesota Orchestra, has toured Australia, Canada, Europe, the Far East, Latin America, and the Middle East. Its first nine music directors included Eugene Ormandy, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Antal Dorati, Stanis?aw Skrowaczewski, Neville Marriner, and Edo de Waart. In 2003, the orchestra welcomed its 10th music director, Finnish conductor Osmo Vänskä, who guides a season encompassing nearly 200 concerts that are attended by 400,000 individuals, and education and outreach programs that serve 85,000 music lovers of all ages. Hundreds of thousands also hear the orchestra through live regional broadcasts, SymphonyCast, Performance Today, and a regular broadcast series on BBC Radio's Performance on 3.
In the early 1920s, the Minnesota Orchestra became one of the first ensembles to be heard on recordings and radio. Its landmark Mercury Living Presence LP recordings of the 1950s and 1960s have been reissued on compact disc to great acclaim. Most recently, the orchestra's cycle of the complete Beethoven symphonies has been hailed internationally, and it has undertaken new Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, and Bruckner recording projects.
Since its inception, the orchestra has nourished a strong commitment to contemporary composers, premiering and/or commissioning nearly 300 compositions. Among these are works by John Adams, Aaron Copland, John Corigliano, Charles Ives, Libby Larsen, Stephen Paulus, and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, as well as Composer Laureate Dominick Argento, Conductor Laureate Stanis?aw Skrowaczewski, and Aaron Jay Kernis, who directs the orchestra's annual Composer Institute, a nationally noted professional training program for emerging composers. The orchestra has received 18 awards for adventuresome programming from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), including three consecutive Leonard Bernstein Awards for Educational Programming and, in 2008, the John S. Edwards Award for Strongest Commitment to New American Music. Visit minnesotaorchestra.org for more information.
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