Winter music and the Nordic mindset
Osmo Vänskä interviewed by Brian Newhouse
Finland-born Minnesota Orchestra music director Osmo Vänskä is no stranger to cold winters. In this interview with Brian Newhouse, Vänskä shares his favorite memories growing up with the snow, connecting to nature and climate through music, and what a future partnership between Minnesota Orchestra and The Great Northern might look like.
Brian Newhouse (BN): We in Minnesota sometimes enjoy bragging rights about our winters. But you’re from Finland, so you probably have us beat in that department. How did you engage with winter in Finland, and what’s your relationship with it now in Minnesota?
Osmo Vänskä (OV): I like winter very much. In southern Finland, the winters are like Minnesota’s. But Lapland (the most northern part of Finland, Sweden and Norway) is colder than Minnesota. I loved sledding as a kid and snowballs fights, but I also started cross-country skiing when I was three or four years old, just like all my friends. I still love to ski and I have two pairs in Minnesota, skate-skiing and traditional. I have another pair in Finland, and my longest ski was 50 kilometers. I’ve done that distance a few times, but more typical is 10-15 kilometers. Skiing in Lapland, you can go into one of the small huts, scattered throughout the countryside, to get out of the cold to rest. There’s a fireplace inside, and you heat sausage on a stick. That simple pleasure is great! You want to enjoy winter.
When I was about 18 and had my first Volvo, it was fun to go and watch the car races on the ice of a lake or sea. After the race, I would come back late at night and I loved to slide the car sidewise and run into the soft piled-up snow. That actually taught me how to control the car, and that helps today in a snowy traffic situation. Most people hate the winter I love, with lots of snow.
BN: What music speaks to you about winter?
OV: The most common thing is Christmas carols. Tchaikovsky’s First Symphony is called Winter Dreams, but there are also moments in classical pieces that depict winter in the north to me. For instance, in the last movement of the Piano Concerto by Norway’s Edvard Grieg, there is a beautiful flute solo while the strings play sul ponticello very softly which creates a kind of icy effect. That reminds me in a beautiful way of light coming from a bright star on a clear winter night.
BN: With the launch of the Great Northern Festival, what might a partnership with the Minnesota Orchestra look like?
OV: The Orchestra would love to partner with the Festival to offer new experiences for all of our supporters and our community. I like the idea of winter programming which our two organizations can plan together.
BN: The Festival is also addressing climate change. How might that intersect for you and the Orchestra?
OV: Our winters are changing as a result of global warming. It’s causing extreme storms, hurricanes, and it’s becoming increasingly unpredictable. People are starving when the rains don’t come. As with many things, it’s happening little by little, so it’s hard to recognize, but it’s increasing and scary. We must try to do something about it. When the Orchestra plays Beethoven’s 6th, with its celebration of nature and depiction of a thunderstorm, I’m thinking about all this. One way we can bring this to life is to commission new pieces possibly with texts for singers on this topic. That’s a way to directly connect listeners to this topic. I wish all the best for The Great Northern, as it can point out all these things.
Brian Newhouse is the Associate Vice-President for Individual Giving at the Minnesota Orchestra, and for many years served as the Orchestra’s broadcast host on Classical Minnesota Public Radio.