On Friday night, Osmo Vänskä led the Minnesota Orchestra in an all-Sibelius program. Although the musicians are officially locked out in their dispute with management, an exception was made for this concert, which celebrated the orchestra's Grammy nomination. Writes Larry Fuchsberg: "[Finlandia] became a political act, destroying any lingering pretense of the conductor's impartiality." The management and board in Minnesota need to think long and hard about what they are doing.... The Rochester Philharmonic is another orchestra that has gone into a tailspin on account of destructive actions by management and board. Here is a dedicated blog.... Since August, the flutist Mimi Stillman has been performing Debussy's Syrinx every day and releasing videos of the results. Above is an Amtrak rendition; you can see more here.... Another edition of the Ecstatic Music Festival is under way. In a not unrelated development, maverick violist Nadia Sirota plays a new work by Judd Greenstein at the Kitchen on Tuesday.... Other Minds 2013 begins on Feb. 28; the programs are happily free of been-there-done-that, and are notable, among other things, for their gender parity.... Matthew Guerrieri joins the exceedingly small company of classical-music authors who have appeared on the Colbert Report.... Bang on a Can presents two neatly programmed concerts in conjunction with MoMA's Inventing Abstraction show: the first, on Feb. 26, pairs Debussy and Steve Reich, and the second, on March 4, brings together Arnold and Morty.
