Four years ago, the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra was “desperately in need of intensive care, after a five-week strike and a series of administrative setbacks put the orchestra (whose current budget is around $7-million) nearly $900,000 in the hole in one season. It had no music director and no great prospects for finding one. The ESO itself is having a pretty good time these days. It has an energetic new leader, ticket sales are hitting record levels, and a string of balanced budgets has tamed a once-fearsome accumulated deficit.”