For the Minnesota Orchestra, the Cuba trip was a return engagement of sorts. The orchestra toured there twice before the revolution, in 1929 and 1930, when it was known as the Minneapolis Symphony. When the musicians take the stage at the Teatro Nacional on Friday night, it will play Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony, which was also on the bill at its first concert here in 1929. (The concerts will be broadcast live on the radio in Cuba, and in Minnesota, and will be streamed live at YourClassical.org. And in this case, their diplomatic overture will include a real one: The concert is set to begin with Beethoven’s “Egmont” Overture.)

The last large American orchestra to appear in Cuba was the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, which played here in 1999. The New York Philharmonic considered a tour in 2009 and 2011, but never made it. After President Obama announced the most recent improvement in relations, Riccardo Muti, the music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, said that he hoped his orchestra would be the first American ensemble to tour Cuba. But against all odds, the scrappy Minnesotans got there first.

The trip was the idea of Kevin Smith, the orchestra’s new president, who was brought on to heal wounds remaining after the lockout. The day after President Obama’s announcement, Mr. Smith said, he began trying to plan a trip, seeing it as a way to unify the orchestra and excite its fans.

“We’re not out to just re-establish where we were — where we were ended up in a bad place,” Mr. Smith said, explaining his decision to undertake the trip. “The organization had been a little battered and bruised — and not just the musicians but the entire organization, the board, the staff, the donors, the concertgoers, the subscribers, everybody had just felt a little rocked. All of a sudden this trip has galvanized the organization, and given everybody this sense of excitement and adventure and confidence that we can do anything.”

The trip came together in less than five months — a blink of an eye in classical-music time. The musicians, who had been scheduled to be off this week, agreed to work. Marilyn and Glen Nelson, longtime supporters of the orchestra, agreed to pay for the trip. Once the pieces were in place, the orchestra’s tour organizer, Classical Movements, had 110 days to make it happen.

The logistics were daunting. There was red tape to cut in both countries — including the Cuban visas they had to get as well as the need to comply with newly strict American rules about traveling with instruments that contain certain endangered woods or ivories, which led some players in the orchestra to make alterations to their instruments or bows.