After a roller coaster week of contract negotiations, which reached a dramatic climax on Friday afternoon—with the NSO’s season opening gala concert being cancelled then reinstated hours later--the music won. Saturday’s celebration of the start of the 2024-25 season at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts showcased the virtuosity of our hometown, and world-class orchestra.
The concert began with an organ prelude—a musical thank you to the David M. Rubenstein Family for donating the Kennedy Center Casavant Frères organ, as David Rubenstein prepares to leave the Kennedy Center board in January. Marvin Mills played J.S. Bach’s famous Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. The orchestra then came onstage to enthusiastic applause, and after the traditional playing of the National Anthem, Maestro Gianandrea Noseda launched into a dance-filled program beginning with Four Black American Songs by Kennedy Center Composer-in-Residence Carlos Simon. An exhilarating showpiece for orchestra, this set of dances featured a unique percussion section that even included a pair of boots on a wooden box!
A contrasting trio of dances by the French composer Mel (Mélanie) Bonis (1858- 1937) provided an elegant and graceful bridge to the much-anticipated NSO debut of Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto introducing Yunchan Lim, the youngest-ever winner of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition.
The performance was sensational and the interplay between piano and orchestra was exquisite. The audience’s thunderous applause couldn’t earn an encore from Lim, however, because the program continued with an orchestra favorite, Maurice Ravel’s adrenaline-pumping La Valse.
As more than one person stated Saturday night, we are fortunate to have a world-class orchestra in the Nation’s Capital. That is certainly reason to celebrate. Join us Wednesday morning at 11AM ET on WETA Classical, on air and online to hear a special broadcast of the National Symphony Orchestra 2024 Season Opening Gala.
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