Conductor Osmo Vänskä takes on the Minnesota Orchestra this week as music director. “Vänskä’s personality has intriguing contradictions. He’s a clarinetist who loves hockey and motorcycles. He speaks of personal modesty and subservience to the composer, and yet he works in a glamorous, ego-driven profession in which he has become a star, first in Europe and now increasingly in the United States, where, as a guest conductor, he is constantly re-engaged by the nation’s major orchestras. He embodies the patient, hard-working maestro who in his early years shunned the international spotlight, turning down prestigious guest-conducting offers in Europe in order to devote himself to the Lahti Symphony Orchestra, a once-provincial Finnish ensemble that is now famous the world over for its revelatory recordings of works by Sibelius.”