Board games

Provisionally good news out of San Diego: the board of the opera has voted to postpone closure while it considers various options and reviews the company's perplexing financial history. They say they need $10 million to mount a 2015 season. Strangely, they don't believe that new management is necessary. Meanwhile, the ever-inscrutable board of the Minnesota Orchestra is pondering whether Osmo Vänskä should be reinstated as the orchestra's music director. While Vänskä drew a volcanic reaction from Minnesota audiences last weekend, as Jim Oestreich reports in the Times, a "die-hard faction of directors" is resisting efforts to bring the conductor back, apparently because they feel miffed by his forceful remarks about the orchestra that he has done so much to elevate. Perhaps it is time for this group to set aside petty resentments and, finally, serve the music. Evidence of what Vänskä achieved can be heard in a new BIS disc of the Mozart and Beethoven C-minor Concertos, with Yevgeny Sudbin as soloist. The orchestra plays brilliantly from the first bar to the last.