The Minnesota Orchestra headed to Amsterdam today for the final concert in its three-festival European tour, after performing in London and Edinburgh over the weekend. You can read about the orchestra’s tour here.

Here are excerpts from two newspapers’ reviews of Friday and Saturday's BBC Proms concerts at London’s Royal Albert Hall:

Tim Ashley, The Guardian:

“The Minnesota Orchestra's Proms with their music director Osmo Vänskä were object lessons in the creation of excitement and meaning without resorting to rhetorical extremes. Bruckner's Fourth Symphony and Beethoven's Ninth, given on consecutive days, were the main works. ...

“Vänskä's preference for tension and detail over volume and textural weight results in playing of exceptional lucidity from an orchestra that often functions with the precision of a chamber ensemble. ...

“Neither performance was without controversy. The Bruckner was given in a new edition by Benjamin Korstvedt incorporating cuts that, some have argued, were made under pressure and are therefore inauthentic. And Vänskä's insistence on precise enunciation in the finale of the Beethoven led to syllabic, declamatory singing from the BBC Symphony Chorus. ...

“The Bruckner was paired with Shostakovich's First Cello Concerto, played with understated virtuosity and sardonic humour by Alisa Weilerstein. Berg's Violin Concerto, meanwhile, accompanied Beethoven's Ninth. Gil Shaham ... was the soloist in a touching performance that combined great formal control with nostalgic intensity.” Full review here.

Richard Morrison, The Times, London:

“For better or worse, this is a real marriage of conductor and orchestra. Not all bands take to Osmo Vänskä, mainly because he believes, like Edison, that genius — in music-making, as in other areas — is 1 per cent inspiration and 99 per cent perspiration. In Minnesota, where the Finn has been since 2003, he has found a band that seems to thrive on the hard graft that he demands.

“What’s gained is exceptional rapport and polish. Not a bar of Bruckner’s 70-minute Fourth Symphony passed without us feeling that Vänskä and his players were unanimously recreating an interpretation that had been prepared with meticulous attention to detail. And the interpretation itself was convincing ... .

“What’s lost, occasionally, is free-spirited spontaneity. The exultant brass refrain that breaks through the scherzo’s galloping fanfares, the waves of exultation at the end of the first movement: these all fell a fraction short in passion — as though the players felt unsure if they were allowed to display unfettered joy. ...

“Yet everything that Vänskä does is imbued with such integrity and intensity that you are drawn into the music despite reservations. I felt the same about the concert’s first half. ...

"Alisa Weilerstein gave a riveting performance in Shostakovich’s First Cello Concerto. ... [she] traversed this epic work with suppleness and authority." (Full review by subscription only.)