Minnesota Orchestra

Performers

• Lisa Batiashvili, Violin
• Minnesota Orchestra
  Osmo Vänskä, Music Director and Conductor

Program

• BEETHOVEN Violin Concerto
• SIBELIUS Symphony No. 6
• SIBELIUS Symphony No. 7
• 
  Encore:
• SIBELIUS Valse triste, Op. 44, No. 1

Bios

• Lisa Batiashvili
  
  Violinist Lisa Batiashvili first entered the international spotlight in 1995, when, at age 16, she was the youngest-ever entrant in the Sibelius Violin Competition—and won second place. She has since received numerous additional honors, most recently the International Accademia Musicale Chigiana Prize in Siena, and has earned accolades for her solo appearances with major orchestras across Europe and North America. She now records exclusively for Deutsche Grammophon.
  
  Highlights of Ms. Batiashvili’s current season include a European tour with the New York Philharmonic and Alan Gilbert; concerts with The Philadelphia Orchestra under Vladimir Jurowski; and appearances with the London Philharmonia Orchestra under Lorin Maazel, the NDR Sinfonieorchester under Alan Gilbert, and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen. She also performs regularly with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Boston and Chicago symphony orchestras, Berliner Philharmoniker, Leipzig Gewandhaus, Dresden Staatskapelle, Royal Concertgebouw, Orchestre de Paris, London Philharmonic, NHK Symphony, and Sydney Symphony.
  
  In demand as a chamber-music artist, Ms. Batiashvili has been invited to participate in the Salzburg, Edinburgh, Aldeburgh, Marlboro, Tanglewood, Saratoga, Schleswig-Holstein, Schubertiade Schwarzenberg, and Kuhmo music festivals. This year, she appears in recital with Adrian Brendel and Till Fellner at London’s Wigmore Hall, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Berlin Philharmonie, and the Vienna Musikverein. François Leleux and Lawrence Power are also among her frequent chamber-music partners.
  
  Another of Ms. Batiashvili’s commitments is to new music. She has given world-premiere performances of Magnus Lindberg’s Violin Concerto; Nicolas Bacri’s Double Concerto for Violin, Oboe, and Chamber Orchestra; and Bacri’s Capriccio for Three Violins and Orchestra. Her recording for Sony of the Lindberg and Sibelius violin concertos brought her the 2008 MIDEM Classical Award and the Choc de l’année.
  
  A native of the Republic of Georgia, Ms. Batiashvili studied with Mark Lubotski at the Musikhochschule Hamburg before working with Ana Chumachenko at the Musikhochschule in Munich, where she has lived since 1994. She plays the 1709 Engleman Stradivarius, on loan from the Nippon Music Foundation.

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• Minnesota Orchestra
  
  The Minnesota Orchestra is recognized for distinguished performances around the world, award-winning recordings, radio broadcasts and educational programs, and commitment to building the repertoire of the future. Founded as the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra in 1903, the ensemble played its first regional tour in 1907, debuted at Carnegie Hall in 1912, and has returned for regular New York performances ever since. The orchestra, known since 1968 as the Minnesota Orchestra, has toured to Australia, Canada, Europe, the Far East, Latin America, and the Middle East. Among its first nine music directors were Eugene Ormandy, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Antal Dorati, Stanisław Skrowaczewski, Neville Marriner, and Edo de Waart. In 2003, the orchestra welcomed its 10th music director, Finnish conductor Osmo Vänskä, who guides a season that encompasses nearly 200 concerts that are heard live by 400,000 individuals, and education and outreach programs that serve 85,000 music lovers of all ages. Thousands also hear the orchestra through live regional broadcasts and such national programs as SymphonyCast and Performance Today.
  
  In the early 1920s, the Minnesota Orchestra became one of the first ensembles to be heard on recordings and radio. Its landmark Mercury Living Presence LP recordings of the 1950s and 1960s have been reissued on compact disc to great acclaim. Since completing an internationally acclaimed cycle of the complete Beethoven symphonies and a two-CD set of Tchaikovsky’s piano-and-orchestra works, the orchestra has undertaken a Beethoven piano concerto project, as well as Bruckner and Sibelius recordings.
  
  From its inception, the orchestra has nourished a strong commitment to contemporary composers, premiering and/or commissioning nearly 300 compositions. Among these are works by John Adams, Aaron Copland, John Corigliano, Charles Ives, Libby Larsen, Stephen Paulus, and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, as well as Composer Laureate Dominick Argento, Conductor Laureate Stanisław Skrowaczewski, and Aaron Jay Kernis, who directs the orchestra’s Composer Institute. The orchestra has received 18 awards for adventuresome programming from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), including three consecutive Leonard Bernstein Awards for Educational Programming and, in 2008, the John S. Edwards Award for Strongest Commitment to New American Music.
  
  
  Osmo Vänskä
  
  Osmo Vänskä, who in 2003 became the Minnesota Orchestra’s 10th music director, is renowned for his compelling interpretations of the standard, contemporary, and Nordic repertoires. During his Minnesota tenure, he has drawn acclaim at home and abroad, leading the orchestra on concert tours to European music capitals in 2004 and 2009, and tours to major European festivals in 2006 and 2010, as well as numerous performances throughout Minnesota.
  
  Mr. Vänskä has recorded the complete Beethoven symphonies with the orchestra for the Swedish label BIS in a five-year, five-disc cycle, with each album garnering superlative international reviews, and two—one of the Ninth Symphony and another of the Second and Seventh—receiving Grammy and Classic FM Gramophone award nominations, respectively. Releases in 2009–2010 included a two-CD set of Tchaikovsky’s works for piano and orchestra, recorded live in concert with Stephen Hough. This year, Mr. Vänskä and the orchestra launch a new project, recording the complete Sibelius symphonies, while they continue to record the complete Beethoven piano concertos with Yevgeny Sudbin.
  
  As a guest conductor, Mr. Vänskä has led all the major American orchestras, as well as many European and Asian ensembles, including the Berliner Philharmoniker, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, London Philharmonic, Orchestre National de France, Royal Concertgebouw, and Yomiuri Nippon Symphony. Mr. Vänskä began his music career as a clarinetist, holding major posts with orchestras in his native Finland. For two decades, he was music director of the Lahti Symphony Orchestra, which he transformed into one of Finland’s flagship orchestras, attracting worldwide attention for performances and for award-winning Sibelius recordings on the BIS label. By 2008, when he was named Lahti’s Conductor Laureate, he had also completed a five-year tenure as chief conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra of Glasgow.
  
  Since arriving in Minnesota, Mr. Vänskä has again taken up his original instrument, performing as a clarinetist in chamber ensembles at Orchestra Hall, other Twin Cities venues, Napa Valley’s Music in the Vineyards, the Grand Teton Music Festival, and the Mostly Mozart Festival, where he also conducts each summer. Mr. Vänskä has extended his tenure with the Minnesota Orchestra through 2015.

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