The Hardest-Working Orchestra in America . . . and soon the Best?

On a steamy, sauna-like day in June, Osmo Vänskä and the Minnesota Orchestra are busy trying to cement their reputation as the most definitive interpreters of Beethoven in the twenty-first century—so far, at least. A makeshift recording studio is set up in the basement of Orchestra Hall and preparations are under way to record the “Storm” movement of Beethoven’s Symphony no. 6, or Pastorale, the muscular climax of what is otherwise regarded as Beethoven’s most sedate symphony. The recording team from BIS, the Swedish label that made Vänskä’s famous recordings with Finland’s Lahti Symphony, flew in a couple of days ago, but Rob Suff, the senior producer, is still feeling some jet lag. Upon his arrival, a package of CDs had been waiting for him at his hotel—of all the orchestra’s recent public performances of Beethoven’s Symphonies nos. 1 and 6—and he had spent the day before sequestered in his hotel room listening to them, studying them to acquaint himself with every note and nuance of Vänskä’s “vision” for these works.

The pressure is on: These latest recordings must be as good or better than the previous ones, which the critical community has already crowned as perhaps the definitive Beethoven of our time. Suff, the man who produced those recordings, is also quite literally the only person on the planet to whom the persnickety Osmo Vänskä defers in matters of musical judgment. So Suff must know his stuff.

Upstairs, the orchestra is set up for a concert, though the seats are empty. An intricate network of twenty-seven microphones has been arranged to record the sound, which travels along a tangle of wires into the basement, through a mixer, and into Suff’s headphones. Otherwise, not a decibel of what the orchestra plays can be heard downstairs. Five large speaker monitors are arranged in a semicircle for playback, when the time comes, but for now everything is going through the headphones, which include an extra set for me to listen.

In the hall, Vänskä taps his baton and the music begins: a few raindrops and rumbles at first, slowly building to a thick, visceral blast—a thunderclap of drums, cymbals, trumpets, and horns. The orchestra then takes off on a wild excursion of sound, creating dramatic, billowing plumes of music that seem to tumble forward like water in a flood, rushing fast and dangerous through gullies and ditches, careening off rocks, and spraying a fine, light mist along the way, eventually settling into a peaceful, steady stream.

As the orchestra plays, Suff watches Vänskä conduct on a small television monitor while the score scrolls across an LCD screen in front of him. Suff’s left hand waves and flows with the music (he was a conductor before he got into the recording business), but his right hand is busy taking copious notes. According to Vänskä, Suff has the “best ears in the business,” eardrums as attuned to the intricacies of classical music as a great wine taster is to the flavors floating in a fine cabernet. Vänskä trusts Suff’s ears implicitly, but there are times when even Vänskä is taken aback by Suff’s attention to detail.

Abruptly, Suff calls for the orchestra to stop playing.

“Some people are driving through the beat and others are putting the brakes on, so it’s not coming together,” Suff says into a microphone, which is piped into the hall so that the musicians can hear. “I’m not hearing the same clarity in the bassoons as the clarinets. And the violas are coming in too strong, too soon.”

“That’s me,” says Vänskä. “I brought them in too early.”

Suff responds with an even more withering analysis of the passage they have just played. “Can the flute give a little less on bar ten? The woodwinds and brass didn’t come together on bar fifty-six. We need more horns on bar eighty-four. More pizzicato in the second violin, please. Also, I’m still hearing the horns come in just a bit too early, and the oboe was flat.”