It's been a kind of orchestral Olympics at Carnegie Hall these past several months, with one world-class orchestra finishing their concert and another one waiting in the wings to begin theirs.

Osmo Vanska brought the Minnesota Orchestra and Y.L. Male Voice Choir from Finland, to New York for what was a more austere program than most, and played to an only partially full hall.

But according to Alex Ross, the music critic for The New Yorker Magazine, it was a concert of "uncanny, wrenching power, the kind you hear once or twice a decade."

Ross goes on with his praise, "For the duration of the evening of March 1, the Minnesota Orchestra sounded, to my ears, like the greatest orchestra in the world."

Ross spoke with All Things Considered host Tom Crann about that performance.

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