Stanislaw Skrowaczewski turned 90 in Tokyo yesterday. “Make history by setting an example for other orchestras to follow,” he urged in the Star Tribune, “and end the labor-management paradigm that leads to these kinds of disputes.” Perelman’s admittedly radical plan sounds like a clarion call on a golden trumpet. Lawrence Perelman, managing director of Semantix Creative Group, believes the musicians should also resign, then immediately form their own self-governing orchestra.
A contract must still be negotiated, musicians must play, and the community must have its orchestra.” Yes to the last two musts, maybe about the first. Orchestrate Excellence, a community group of audience members heroically trying to walk the middle path between the two warring sides, issued a statement saying, in part: “While we have experienced a significant ending, it is important to remember that this is not the end. … In all of this, the audience of music-lovers, who most appreciate the orchestra’s extraordinary gifts have been forgotten and their voices disregarded.” MinnPost’s Doug Grow wrote, “Blame whomever you want, but it seems that the wreck of the elite Minnesota Orchestra is now complete.” In his own letter of resignation, which followed Vänskä’s later that same day, Pulitzer Prize winner Aaron Jay Kernis, founder and director of the Minnesota Orchestra’s Composer Institute, laid it out: “I admit total bafflement and dismay at what has been done to allow the dismemberment of this superb orchestra at the height of its powers. At the Star Tribune, columnist Jon Tevlin threw up his hands and wondered, “Orchestra, government: Is everything just breaking bad?” The New Yorker’s music critic Alex Ross wrote in his blog, The Rest Is Noise: “That the Minnesota Orchestra Association has allowed this conductor to depart strikes me as a management failure of historic proportions.” Chicago-based arts consultant Drew McManus wrote in his blog, Adaptistration: “The artistic entity known as the Minnesota Orchestra no longer exists.”
Reactions to Vänskä’s resignation ranged from shock to dismay, anger and sadness. The concerts at the Ted Mann will feature pianist Emanuel Ax, who was originally scheduled to launch the 2013-14 subscription season tonight with the musicians and Vänskä at the newly renovated Orchestra Hall.
Tune in or listen to the live stream at. Saturday will be broadcast live by Classical MPR. UPDATE: The third concert sold out almost immediately.
If you go, bring lots of tissue, because there will not be a dry eye in the house. They include special $15 tickets for students. Saturday at the Ted Mann Concert Hall, went on sale this morning at 8 a.m. Tickets to the third concert, to be held at 2 p.m. At first, two concerts were scheduled, but a third was added after the musicians announced that Osmo Vänskä, who resigned as music director Tuesday, would conduct the concerts as a “thank you and farewell to the community and audience that have supported classical music so passionately.” Demand exploded. Tonight and Saturday, the musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra will play three concerts at the Ted Mann Concert Hall – their self-produced fall season as the lockout enters its second year with no end in sight.
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