Osmo Vänskä knows what he wants: music played with passion and precision. He also knows that as a conductor--the only member of an orchestra without an instrument in hand--evoking the glories of Bach, Beethoven and Bartók requires teamwork. Tightening thumbscrews doesn't work, he says: "I respect the players: the day I hear them say I'm brutal, then I'll have to look in the mirror."

It's a hard-driving philosophy that has won him both results and affection. As the longtime music director of the Lahti Symphony Orchestra and the former chief conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony, Vänskä has earned high marks from critics, audiences and collaborators alike for his deft interpretations, music-making intensity and ability to breathe new life into standard repertoire. The [London] Times, for example, called his interpretation of Beethoven's Fifth a "reinvention" of the work. Demanding yet deferential, hard-working but good-humored, the 50-year-old Finn has seen his star rise as word of his innovative work in Lahti has spread. Invitations from top European and American orchestras have poured in. For any orchestra looking for a leader, noted one critic, Vänskä would make a "prize catch."

It was the Minnesota Orchestra, of course, that finally hooked Vänskä as its new music director after an international search in 2001. "A couple of American orchestras have inquired," he told a Finnish newspaper in 2001. "Minnesota was the first one in which I was seriously interested." This fall, with the start of the Orchestra's 101st year, marks Vänskä's much anticipated arrival as the resident maestro at Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis. And plenty of surprises are in store.

Vänskä's programming choices for the 2003-2004 season launch a three-year cycle of Beethoven symphonies and a two-year cycle introducing the works of Danish composer Carl Nielsen. Traditionalists will enjoy his selections of Mozart, Rossini, and Rachmaninoff--not to mention such barn-burners as Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique and Orff's Carmina Burana. For listeners looking for something less familiar, there are works by Kernis, Adams and Paulus. "People always come up to me after concerts of [new music] and say 'Oh I didn't know it was going to be so fantastic,'" Vänskä says. His programming also includes works by a fellow Finn, Jean Sibelius. Every piece of music, however, has to generate excitement, he says: "People must have moments when they have the feeling--'I thought I knew this piece, but now it sounds so fresh.'"

Though concerts at Orchestra Hall are his first priority, Vänskä also has plans to record and tour nationally and internationally with the Minnesota Orchestra. His longstanding collaboration with the BIS label has resulted in dozens of award-winning recordings and now that partnership will include the Minnesota Orchestra: this season Vänskä and the Orchestra will begin recording the complete Beethoven symphonies for BIS, no small feat at a time when recording contracts among orchestras are fast dwindling. In 2004, he intends to take Minnesota musicians on a European tour, including stops in Austria, Germany, the United Kingdom and a final performance in Lahti, Finland. His rapport with musicians will be vital to those endeavors. "The only way to achieve miracles is by working together," he says. He compares the relationship of maestro and musicians to that of a marriage, requiring the "right words," "respect" and considerable "care."

The result should be passion, even heat, that is felt by concertgoers. "We have to go beyond the notes," Vänskä says of the Orchestra's mission. "It has to be a real experience. It has to leave people feeling like they've been changed, that they've touched something bigger than their own lives. The experience should make it easier, somehow, to go to work the next morning."

-- Joel Hoekstra