In Wednesday’s (8/4) The Scotsman (Edinburgh), Kenneth Walton previews the orchestral lineup at this summer’s Edinburgh International Festival, highlighting appearances by Osmo Vänskä and the Minneapolis Orchestra, which will perform Beethoven Seventh’s Symphony at the festival. “There’s one man who makes a habit of breathing new life into a trusty old warhorses—Osmo Vänskä—whose sole appearance at the Festival on 29 August with his Minnesota Orchestra will, I’ll wager, be a moment to savour. How can we be so sure? The answer is simply this: first-hand experience. Who could forget the three explosive symphonic series Vänskä engineered in Glasgow as music director of the BBC SSO in the late 1990s and up to his departure for the States in 2003, which successively demolished any preconceptions we had of all Sibelius’s, Rachmaninov’s, Nielsen’s and, yes, even Beethoven’s well-worn symphonies? … This month’s Edinburgh visit is part of a quick-fire European trip that takes in two BBC Proms appearances—including the annual performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony—and a show in Amsterdam’s prestigious Concertgebouw. … There’s a particular Vänskä sound that was established during his early days in his native Finland … which is as reinvigorating today with the Minnesota as it was nearly a decade ago with the SSO.”
Posted August 4, 2010
