The most exciting thing to watch at your average Minnesota Orchestra concert is conductor Osmo Vanska. He's known for an athletic, enthusiastic style that ups the entertainment value of whatever's being performed. However, Vanska has a formidable challenger for the audience's attention at this weekend's concerts in Swedish clarinetist Martin Frost, who's every bit the conductor's equal as a master of movement.

On Thursday morning at Minneapolis' Orchestra Hall, Frost gave Finnish composer Kalevi Aho's Clarinet Concerto its American debut, and made it a fascinating experience, a journey into a sound world all its own and the kind of visual treat too seldom found at a classical concert. It almost managed to upstage the program's chief attraction, a performance of Johannes Brahms' fourth and final symphony.

But not quite, for Vanska was clearly determined to unleash his interpretive imagination upon that masterwork. And the orchestra gave it an intensely passionate and precise reading, lush but never lugubrious.

The flamboyant Frost proved quite a dancer on Thursday, twirling and prancing like a piper while engaging in conversational exchanges with the orchestra. The Aho concerto allowed him to show off the diverse skills that have put him at the forefront of a new generation of clarinetists. He went to extremes of mood, pitch and volume level, but emphasized the work's musicality at every turn. And his visual presentation made it all the more exciting, as he tiptoed, slid, squatted and sent the bell of his horn skyward, leaning back and looking the picture of exultation.

But the Brahms symphony found Vanska almost matching Frost for physicality, particularly during a slow movement full of graceful cues, the conductor using every inch of the podium as he swooped and snaked about before bouncing like a marionette on the third movement. The orchestra responded with a crisp and powerful performance, culminating in a finale that emphasized themes being passed between soloists and sections, the parts adding up to a sumptuous sum.

Rob Hubbard can be reached at

Who: The Minnesota Orchestra with conductor Osmo Vanska and clarinetist Martin Frost

What: Works by Sergei Prokofiev, Kalevi Aho and Johannes Brahms

When: 8 p.m. today and Saturday

Where: Orchestra Hall, 1111 Nicollet Mall, Minneapolis


Capsule: A program as pleasing to eyes as ears.