OSMOSIS.

On a recent night in Minneapolis, as the temperature plunged toward sixteen below zero, an unlikely midwinter carnival took place in Orchestra Hall. The Finnish conductor Osmo Vanska, who became the music director of the Minnesota Orchestra in 2003, had decided to present a symphony by his countryman Kalevi Aho, and the orchestra chose to spotlight rather than hush up this contemporary intrusion into the gated community of "great composers." A folk ensemble sang Finnish songs in the lobby. Finnish arts and crafts were for sale alongside characteristic pastries, including homemade snickerdoodles, which I enjoyed too much to question whether they were really Finnish. The hubbub drew in curious passersby. A couple walked up to the ticket window and asked, "What kinda show ya got tonight?" The cashier answered, "We've got some Mozart and some"--she paused--"Aho." The couple blanched. "But Osmo is here," she added. That closed the deal.

Vanska is hugely popular in Minnesota, and this concert showed why. First came a richly voiced "Magic Flute" Overture. Then Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 27, with Emanuel Ax as the crisp, heartfelt soloist. Finally, the Aho--the composer's Seventh Symphony, subtitled "Insect Symphony." Each movement depicts a different insect species, with a human allegory that's easily detectable. Butterflies dance an insouciant foxtrot and tango; bohemian dung beetles lament lost time; worker ants march in totalitarian lockstep. The sequence of moods and styles seemed haphazard at first, but the last two movements delivered such a psychic double whammy--the Fascistic march followed by a desperately lovely lullaby for cello (dayflies)--that the structure felt secure. The orchestra played with the kind of furious finesse that every composer prays for. The audience responded with a yelling ovation. No one was talking about Mozart on the way out.

In the past few years, Vanska has gone from relative obscurity to the front ranks of conductors. In city after city, he has shaken orchestras out of their routines and audiences out of their slumbers. A clarinettist by training, he started out in 1985 as the principal guest conductor of the Lahti Symphony--named for its home city, in the south of Finland. Thanks to a series of Sibelius recordings on the BIS label, word spread that Vanska had somehow put together a first-class ensemble in a town of a hundred thousand people. In 1996, he appeared in front of a half-empty Carnegie Hall with the Iceland Symphony. Sibelius's Second was the main work, and by the end of the second movement that trusty warhorse had become a moody, fearsome beast. Of all the out-of-townorchestra concerts I've heard at Carnegie, that one was the most thrilling.

In the last week of January, Vanska brought the Lahti Symphony to Avery Fisher Hall. Sibelius's Second was again the main attraction, and again it rocked the house. Vanska says that he aims for "passion and precision," and he is the rare conductor who achieves the latter without sacrificing the former. He is a stickler for detail, and can exasperate players. But his exactitude serves an expressive end: minute shadings of dynamics and tempo create a cinematic depth of field, before which grand gestures unfold. Passion is always on the surface: Vanska loves extremes of emotion, such as Sibelius's spasms of sorrow and joy, and he holds nothing back.

Not content with his status as a genius Sibelius interpreter, Vanska is now invading the mainstream repertory. He has undertaken a Beethoven cycle in Minnesota and is also recording the symphonies for BIS. The first installment, which will be in stores this month, pairs the Fourth and Fifth. There are no revolutionary interpretive departures, but the orchestra plays with startling, ear-cleansing vigor throughout, and the sound is as vivid as technology allows. Whether or not Vanska's Beethoven replaces Karajan's in every home, Minnesotans will certainly embrace it, and they are the audience that counts. The future of music is local, not global. Every ensemble must justify itself to its community, because the global economy has no use for a symphony orchestra playing Beethoven or Aho or anything else. In this sense, Vanska, an imperious but unpretentious conductor who ...