The Minnesota Orchestra indisputably struck gold when they stumbled onto Osmo Vänskä, their music director since 2003. Nearly unknown in America before his appointment, he has since lifted the orchestra from a reliably excellent regional ensemble to one of the most prominent on the national stage. Everyone loves Osmo: critics, audiences, and musicians, and he has easily proven himself to be among the most promising conductors in the world right now. His latest feat has been recording the best and freshest-sounding Beethoven symphony cycle in years, of which this recording is just the latest example. The burden of recorded history on these pieces is crushing: as a conductor, you can hardly lift your baton without inadvertently copying some venerable master's previous interpretation. And yet Vänskä pulls off the seemingly impossible trick of making you forget about the stern hall of ghosts looming just over his shoulder: guys with imposing, carved-in-granite names like Klemperer, Kleiber, Toscanini, Furtwängler. Without seeming the least bit concerned about anyone's interpretations of these monumental works save his own, Vänskä draws fleet, light-footed playing out of the players that never feels hurried, making the first movement Second Symphony sound as bubbly and refreshing as the written music… read more »