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By Matthew Westphal
and Ben Mattison
14 Sep 2006
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| The Minnesota Orchestra, with music director Osmo Vänskä at front right and the Minneapolis skyline in the background. |
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| photo by Ann Marsden |
Today the Minnesota Orchestra and music director Osmo Vänskä open the 2006-07 season, their fourth together, with a late-morning concert at Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis. (Minnesotans with day jobs need not worry: the program repeats tomorrow and Saturday, September 16, at 8 pm.) The program offers Martinu's Memorial to Lidice, the Sibelius Violin Concerto with Viktoria Mullova as soloist, and Beethoven's "Eroica" Symphony (No. 3).
All three concerts will be simulcast onto a giant LED screen in Peavey Plaza, the outdoor sunken garden just adjacent to Orchestra Hall. Admission to the screenings is free and open to the public.
Vänskä and the orchestra complete their opening weekend festivities with a late-summer outdoor concert on Sunday afternoon (September 17) at the Lake Harriet Bandshell in Minneapolis. The program features such favorites as Dvorák's Carnival Overture, Weber's Invitation to the Dance and highlights from Grieg's music for Peer Gynt and Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker. Inevitably, they're calling the event "Osmo at Harriet."
The Minnesota Orchestra's '06-07 season, will include the continuation of Vänskä's Beethoven symphony cycle and the launch of a Bruckner cycle. The orchestra will perform five Beethoven symphonies in concert — Nos. 1, 3, 4, 5, and 6 — and will record the First and Sixth Symphonies as part of its complete Beethoven symphonies cycle for the Swedish record label BIS.
The cycle of Bruckner's symphonies, which will be carried out over a decade, will begin with a performance of his Symphony in D minor ("Die Nullte" — that is, as it were, Symphony No. 0).
Next week (September 20, 21 and 23) brings a collaboration with the James Sewell Ballet — and the world premiere of a new dance by Sewell to Bartók's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, along with canzonas for brass by Gabrieli, a Mozart serenade for winds and Stravinsky's Rite of Spring.
Other season highlights include the orchestra's first performance of a score by Vänskä himself (Here! ... Beyond); a tribute to former music director Antal Dorati; the re-creation of a concert performed by the orchestra in the 1906-07 season; a tour of Minnesota; and two nights at New York's Carnegie Hall featuring the Fourth and Fifth Symphonies of Beethoven and Sibelius.
For those who can't attend in person, live recordings of the Minnesota Orchestra's concerts are now available in streaming audio on demand at Minnesota Public Radio's website (www.mpr.org) for up to a year after the performance date.
For tickets and information about the Minnesota Orchestra's 2006-07 season, visit www.minnesotaorchestra.org.
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