Strife Joins Minnesota Musicians in Concert Jenn Ackerman for The New York Times Osmo Vanska conducting the Minnesota musicians at Ted Mann Concert Hall. MINNEAPOLIS - By the end of a disastrous week, classical music fans in this city sorely needed something positive to hang onto, however fleetingly. And, happily, they got momentary relief over the weekend in three concerts by the players of the Minnesota Orchestra, conducted by Osmo Vanska. This latest sequence in the saga of the 110-year-old orchestra, which has worked under illustrious maestros like Eugene Ormandy, Dimitri Mitropoulos and Antal Dorati, will go down as a sad chapter in the history of American ensembles: on Sept. 28, the players, who have been locked out in a labor dispute since their last contract expired on Oct. 1, 2012, voted to reject management's fourth proposal for a new contract, this one sweetened with a $20,000 signing bonus per player. 30, after last-ditch negotiations between management and the players had broken down, the orchestra canceled its two Sibelius concerts scheduled for Carnegie Hall in early November. Mr. Vanska, 60 and especially renowned as a Sibelius interpreter, had repeatedly stressed how important those concerts would be for him, and on Tuesday he resigned as the orchestra's music director, two years before his contract was to expire. Also on Tuesday, the composer Aaron Jay Kernis resigned as director of the orchestra's acclaimed Composer Institute, expressing "total bafflement and dismay at what has been done to allow the dismemberment of this superb orchestra at the height of its powers." By then it had become clear that the orchestra's official season-opening concert, scheduled for Friday in the newly renovated Orchestra Hall, would not take place. So the players, calling themselves the Musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra, went ahead with contingency plans to put on their own concerts on Friday and Saturday evenings at the Ted Mann Concert Hall on the campus of the University of Minnesota. They took over the program planned for the official opening - piano concertos by Beethoven (No. 3) and Mozart (No. 27), Beethoven's "Egmont" Overture and Stravinsky's "Firebird" Suite - as well as its soloist, the pianist Emanuel Ax. And finally on Thursday, the musicians announced what was by then widely expected, that Mr. Vanska would conduct the concerts as a thank you and farewell to Minnesota. The Friday and Saturday evening concerts in the 1,100-seat hall sold out quickly, and a third was added for Saturday afternoon, leaving Mr. Ax, who was donating his services, to give six concerto performances within 26 hours. "I couldn't say no to the players," Mr. Ax said in an interview. I'm so happy to see them happy for a few days. I don't have enough knowledge about anything to take sides. All I want is for this lockout to go away. Mr. Vanska, for his part, declined to be interviewed. The rehearsals with Mr. Vanska had "a bizarre air of normalness that we don't experience that often anymore," said R. Douglas Wright, the orchestra's principal trombonist, in a news conference. It was a wonderful feeling. Mr. Vanska had shown before what remarkable results he could achieve with these players in limited rehearsal time, when he conducted them in a special concert in February to celebrate the orchestra's Grammy nomination for a recording of Sibelius's Second and Fifth Symphonies. Again on Friday, he had the group in fine form. The performances of the programmed works were excellent, but it was the encore that proved most poignant in connection with the orchestra's plight and Mr. Vanska's departure. Speaking from the stage, Mr. Vanska introduced Sibelius's "Valse Triste," describing it as a dance of death and asking the audience to withhold applause at the end. Listeners left the auditorium quietly, many in tears. So there was euphoria mingled with sadness. But what now for the Minnesota Orchestra? Little more than a year ago, it stood on the verge of real greatness. There can be little question that recent events - and especially the departure of a music director who had developed remarkable chemistry with the players - have left it diminished. Disarray is apparent just from the roster in the program book for the weekend concerts. It lists 75 players, 7 of whom are on leave (most on loan to other orchestras, one said to be "seeking other career options"), and 23 extra musicians. Twenty positions are said to be vacant. "A Guide to "Ghosts": Musicians Lost to the Lockout" on the players" Web site, which accompanies a photograph of the orchestra with missing players whited out, lists 27 musicians. Management, noting that many of them had decided to leave before the labor strife began, allows that two players have resigned and eight have initiated leaves of absence in connection with the negotiations or the lockout. That disagreement, though symptomatic of the deep distrust on both sides, is of course minor, compared with the issues central to the dispute, chiefly salaries. In the contract that expired last year, the players received a base scale of $113,000 and an average annual salary of $135,000. Management's original proposal for a new contract, made in September 2012, would have imposed severe cuts in an attempt to erase a $6 million deficit all at once: a base of $78,000 and an average salary of $89,000 (the whole estimated by management as a 33 percent cut). Management's most recent offer, made on Sept. 26, allowed for a base of $89,000 (averaged over three years) and an average salary of $104,500 (estimated as a 17.7 percent cut from 2012). This, according to management, would have eliminated only $3.6 million of the deficit.