Raise your glass with us for the National Symphony Orchestra’s 93rd season and WETA Classical’s 16th season of NSO Showcase programs. To celebrate, we’re kicking off the festivities with a special Season Opening Gala concert, broadcast on Wednesday morning, September 27th at 11 on air and online.
We’ll bring you the highlights of the NSO’s glamorous Gala which WETA producer John Banther and I attended at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts last Saturday. As you’ll remember, the wind was blowing and the rain was pouring on Saturday night, so the pre-concert reception was held upstairs at the Nation’s Gallery. As the NSO’s new Executive Director, Jean Davidson said, “If rain on your wedding day is good luck, a tropical storm on your gala night means that it’s gonna be a really good season!”
The weather didn’t blow away the glamor, though. I admired a lot of beautifully-gowned women and dapper gentlemen. Even the orchestra’s women players wore colorful outfits instead of the usual concert black. It all added to the festive atmosphere. Following the reception, Music director Gianandrea Noseda led the orchestra in an exhilarating program of orchestral showpieces.
Four of the National Symphony’s Associate and Assistant Principal Musicians: violinists Ying Fu and Dayna Hepler, violist Abigail Evans Kreuzer and cellist Glenn Garlick were featured in Sir Edward Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro. This piece, for string quartet and string orchestra, was written to showcase members of the new London Symphony Orchestra in 1905 and includes a beautiful melody that Elgar heard while vacationing in Wales. We got a chance during a break in rehearsals to talk to the quartet, and they were excited for their star turn, and for the fact that three of them are playing instruments on loan from Maestro Noseda, a great privilege. The Elgar piece is truly sumptuous and showcases the interplay between the members of the quartet and the larger string orchestra. I was also impressed by their colleagues’ enthusiastic support, stomping their feet on the stage to show their appreciation.
The percussion section gets a workout in the Gala’s opening work, Rossini’s Overture to La Gazza Ladra that begins with a snare drum roll. The two snare drums are prominently placed at opposite ends of the chorister seats. Rossini claimed to have written the overture under duress the day before the premiere, imprisoned in a room under the roof at La Scala, guarded by 4 stagehands who had orders to throw him out the window if he didn’t produce the music in time! You get the impression that Rossini was reliving the fate of his heroine, the servant girl Ninetta, who was wrongly imprisoned for stealing a spoon (the bird did it). Unlike the true story upon which the opera is based, Ninetta is exonerated just in time!
Kennedy Center Composer-in-Residence Carlos Simon’s intensely rhythmic Fate Now Conquers reflects Beethoven’s struggles with the concept of destiny and is inspired by a quote from Beethoven’s journal and the second movement of his 7th Symphony.
The whole orchestra gets to rock its virtuosity in Ravel’s orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an exhibition. From the Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks to the Witch Baba Yaga’s Hut on Fowl Legs to the Paris Catacombs to the Great Gate of Kyiv, Mussorgsky and Ravel make us “see” these vivid works of art through music. Maestro Noseda, with his intimate understanding of Russian music from ten years as the first foreign-born guest conductor of the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, brought out all the subtleties and nuances of the work, like brush-strokes in a painting. The audience was electrified, and we all had the feeling, “this is why live music needs to be supported.”
The Season Opening Gala concert is the kick-off to our 16th NSO Showcase season which will highlight some of the orchestra’s best performances and popular soloists. Pour yourself a little bubbly (or a good cup of coffee) and join us for this most elegant broadcast Wednesday morning, September 27th at 11 on air and online.
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