Mr. Vanska was a mostly unseen presence but a major topic of conversation throughout the week. On Tuesday, The Star Tribune reported on speculation that Mr. Vanska would return only if Michael Henson, the orchestra’s embattled president and chief executive, is ousted. On Wednesday, Scott Chamberlain posted a long open letter on his blog (Mask of the Flower Prince), “The Case for Removing Michael Henson,” which Mr. Vanska endorsed on Facebook.

For a year now, requests to interview Mr. Vanska through various intermediaries have all been rebuffed or ignored. He attended part of the dress rehearsal on Friday morning, and clambered up onstage at intermission to speak to Mr. Skrowaczewski at length and to a number of players more briefly, but he declined once again through intermediaries to be interviewed.

At the end of the Friday rehearsal, Mr. Skrowaczewski addressed the players, saying that he hoped Mr. Vanska would be back in place very soon. And on Saturday, in an informal conversation with Brian Newhouse, the managing director of Classical Minnesota Public Radio, Mr. Vanska said, “For any healing to begin at the orchestra, Michael Henson must go.”

If it were not to be Mr. Vanska on the podium for the concerts, there could not have been a more popular choice in Minneapolis than Mr. Skrowaczewski, who drew a half-minute standing ovation of his own. He looked frail and gaunt entering and leaving the stage, but wiry and energized when actually conducting.

And, as in 1974, there could hardly have been a better choice to display the acoustics of the hall than his exuberantly anachronistic and colorful Bach arrangement, complete with tam-tam, cymbals, xylophone, piano, celesta, chimes, even a timpani solo. And, at a couple of spots, Mr. Skrowaczewski turned the game on its head and imitated the sound of the music’s original instrument, the organ, so skillfully that you looked everywhere onstage to find a console that simply wasn’t there.