Hungarian conductor Gabor Takacs-Nagy concludes SPCO's season with passion and soul.

"If you're down, listen to Beethoven." Such was the sage advice of Hungarian conductor Gabor Takacs-Nagy at Friday's midday St. Paul Chamber Orchestra concert. He'd just finished telling the almost-capacity crowd at St. Paul's Ordway Concert Hall of someone he knew with severe depression who said that they found their way out of it thanks to Beethoven and his ability to take us to places of great grief, then illuminate a path beyond it. Then Takacs-Nagy and the orchestra proceeded to demonstrate what Beethoven can do with one of the...