Minnesota Orchestra wows Brit crits – August 30
The Minnesota Orchestra performed Friday and Saturday at the BBC Proms. The annual festival at London’s Royal Albert Hall invited only one American orchestra this year, and that was Osmo Vanska and the band from Minneapolis.
Here’s just a sample of the positive comments from the British press about the performances:
One usually has to wait until [...]
Positive reviews for touring Minnesota Orchestra – August 30
“This was the best orchestral performance of the International Festival so far,” writes Kenneth Walton in Tuesday’s (8/31) Scotsman (Edinburgh). Osmo Vänskä “was back in Scotland with his Minnesota Orchestra, and a programme that might not have seemed out of the ordinary—Elgar’s Cello Concerto and Beethoven’s Symphony No 7, prefaced by Barber’s tone poem Music [...]
Brits and Scots praise Minnesota Orchestra – August 30
AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS – Jane Gregerson, a Minnesota Orchestra board member from Minneapolis, was asked the other night why she traveled all the way to Europe, when she can hear the band in Minneapolis. “I like to know how the rest of the world thinks, how they respond to our orchestra,” she said.
If the three-city tour [...]
Review from The Times: Prom 56: Minnesota Orchestra/Vänskä at the Albert Hall – August 29
For better or worse, this is a real marriage of conductor and orchestra. Not all bands take to Osmo Vänskä, mainly because he believes, like Edison, that genius — in music-making, as in other areas — is 1 per cent inspiration and 99 per cent perspiration. In Minnesota, where the Finn has been since 2003, [...]
Minnesota Orchestra electrifies Scots (plus 70 Minnesotans) – August 29
EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND – The Minnesota Orchestra on Sunday stirred an ebullient reaction in historic Usher Hall with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 and Elgar’s Cello Concerto. After two nights at the BBC Proms in London, the orchestra came to Scotland’s capital for a one-night stand at the Edinburgh International Festival, the second stop on a three-city [...]
Review from The Arts Desk: Shaham, Minnesota Orchestra, Vänskä, Royal Albert Hall – August 29
A great deal of scepticism greeted the release of a new Beethoven cycle from Osmo Vänskä and the Minnesota Orchestra in the mid-2000s. Would this lot really be able say anything that hadn’t already been said by the hundred or so other cycles? Could anyone really find anything very new or fresh to say about [...]
Minnesotans are a hit at the Proms – August 28
The Minnesota Orchestra filled Royal Albert Hall with the energy of soloist Gil Shaham and Beethoven’s Ninth.
The Minnesota Orchestra’s performance of Beethoven’s Ninth consumed the lion’s share of Royal Albert Hall’s psychic energy Saturday — appropriately — but not to be lost in the din was the evening’s poignant first half, in which celebrated violinist [...]
Minnesota Orchestra plays at the Proms – August 27
The Minnesota Orchestra has just finished a big concert. They just played a huge symphony, Bruckner’s 4th, in a huge hall at what might be the most famous festival in the world — the BBC Proms. The Proms is known for its rabid and rowdy classical music crowds.
The Minnesota Orchestra, under music director Osmo Vanska, [...]
Busted string no biggie as Minnesota Orchestra plays first Proms gig – August 27
The Minnesota Orchestra’s first of two Proms concerts in London Friday evening seemed to go over well, judging by the audience reax, and the kind words of the announcer who hosted the concert on BBC-3 radio.
The opener was a work (“Music for a Scene from Shelley”) by American composer Samuel Barber that swelled to a [...]
London calling Minnesota artists – August 27
There were just 72 Minnesotans among more than 5,000 music lovers inside Royal Albert Hall here on Friday night, but they shed any trace of Midwestern reserve in celebrating the joyful response Britons gave to the Minnesota Orchestra at the BBC Proms.
“We’re not foreigners to them anymore,” said Kathy Cunningham, a lifetime director of the [...]