As the winter's first snow fell in northern Minnesota last week, hundreds of stolid, broad-faced Finns hung up their hayforks, put on their store clothes and went to town to hear the season's first concert by Duluth's bumptious, ten-year-old Symphony Orchestra. For music-loving Minnesota Finns this was more than an ordinary symphony concert. The Duluth Symphony had got itself a new conductor whose muscular figure and round, beady-eyed face were as Finnish as his name: Tauno Hannikainen, ex-director of the Helsinki Opera Orchestra and famed in the U.S. for his thunderous interpretations of the music of his great countryman Jean Sibelius. As the orchestra subsided into the final anguished phrases of Tchaikovsky's Pathétique Symphony, hoarse cries of "Elaekoeoen!" "Hurrah!" shook Duluth's barnlike Armory Auditorium.
For the Duluth Symphony, Conductor Hannikainen was the reward of ten years of musical perseverance. In 1932 a Duluth cellist named Alphin Flaaten decided that Duluth ought to have a permanent symphony orchestra. He invited all musicians who were interested in the idea to meet for a rehearsal in the loft of an old stable back of his home. Word of Cellist Flaaten's idea soon spread through Duluth, across the bay to Superior, Wis., and even into the mining camps of the Mesabi iron range, 50 miles north of the city. On the night of the first rehearsal, northern Minnesota was swept by a blizzard. But Cellist Flaaten heaped logs on the fire in the stable's old fireplace and waited. First musician to show up was Alfred Moroni, a miner from Eveleth, Minn., 54 miles away. Oscar Brandser, a clothier from Superior, stomped in with a violin. Lloyd Brissett, from the little paper-mill town of Cloquet, brought his tuba. Housewives, clerks, dentists, elevator operators followed. Dr. W. J. Ryan, a physician, came late. He had been held up by a maternity case. The old stable was so cold they had to play with their overcoats and hats on. A paper salesman named Walter Lange conducted. When the logs were all burned, they tossed old crates on the fire. Next time the Duluth Symphony met, each musician brought a log of wood.
Today the Duluth Symphony is still made up of the same hardworking, hard-playing citizens who founded it. Its bass drummer is a dentist, its concertmaster a stenographer at the Duluth Mental Hygiene Clinic, its kettledrummer a newspaper publisher, its first bassoonist a student at Virginia (Minn.) Junior College, its first cellist a hotel elevator operator. But its members are no amateurs. They draw salaries on a sliding scale that runs from $25 to $40 per concert for experienced musicians, with free bus fare for apprentice students. The Duluth Symphony also pays for and gets such top-rank soloists as Jascha Heifetz, Mischa Elman, Kirsten Flagstad and Josef Hoffman.
In husky Conductor Hannikainen the Duluth musicians have found a leader of their kidney. Hannikainen likes the Duluth climate. It reminds him of Finland.