Can music ultimately do anything to cure the ills of humanity and the evils we inflict on one another?
No work in classical music raises that question quite so acutely as Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, the main item in Saturday evening's Minnesota Orchestra program.
Three movements containing a combustible mix of turmoil, agitation and conflicted introspection eventually give way to a finale where joy explodes, and human voices sing a hymn of optimism to the future.
How convincing does that grand conclusion sound in the riven atmosphere of 21st-century America?
On musical terms alone, Saturday evening's performance of the Ninth was a considerable triumph.
Conceived as part of the Minnesota Orchestra's "Music for Mandela" series celebrating the 100th birthday of the great South African statesman, it had power and eloquence in plenty and was played with singular commitment.
Cellos and double basses fizzed with articulate energy in the crucial recitative passages of the finale. In the hyperactive second movement woodwind clucked and chirruped tirelessly, while the slow movement's counter-melody was movingly voiced by the second violin section.
Conductor Osmo Vänskä's Beethoven — taut, propulsive, cuttingly dramatic — is a known quantity from his many Orchestra Hall performances and his Minnesota Orchestra recordings.
