Matthew Murphy for The New York Times Osmo Vanska conducting the Minnesota Orchestra at Carnegie Hall in 2011.The bitter labor dispute that cost the Minnesota Orchestra its entire 2012-2013 season has now forced the orchestra to postpone recording the next two symphonies in its critically-acclaimed Sibelius cycle, orchestra officials said.
The orchestra earned a Grammy nomination last year for its Bis recording of Sibelius’s second and fifth symphonies. The orchestra, and its Finnish music director, Osmo Vanska, had planned to record Sibelius’s Third and Sixth symphonies next month, with recording sessions scheduled for the week of Sept. 16.
But with the orchestra’s musicians locked out since October, when the players rejected a proposal for a 32 percent cut in base pay and declined to offer a counterproposal, the orchestra and the record label agreed that the planned recording sessions should be postponed until the contract is settled.
Mr. Vanska wrote a letter to the orchestra’s board in April saying that he considered it “extremely important to make the recordings in September as planned,†in part as preparation for the orchestra’s highly-anticipated concerts at Carnegie Hall this November. He threatened to resign as music director if the labor dispute forced the cancellation of the Carnegie Hall concerts.
