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Gala Opening of the NSO Washington
Kennedy Center Concert Hall
09/26/2009 - September 26, only
Mikhail Glinka: Overture to Russlan and Ludmilla
Zoltan Kodály: Dances of Galánta
dPablo De Sarasate: Zigeunerweisen for Violin and Orchestra, op. 20
Frédéric Chopin: Piano Concerto No. 2 in f minor, op. 21
Richard Strauss: Dance of the Seven Veils (Salomé)
Johann Strauss, Jr.: On the Beautiful Blue Danube, op. 314
József Lendvay, Jr. (Violin), Evgeny Kissen (Piano)
National Symphony Orchestra, Iván Fischer (conductor)
NSO with I. Fischer (Photo by Scot for NSO)
The National Symphony Orchestra opened its 2009/2010 season with a Gala Concert that featured two extraordinary soloists in some rather banal and un-extraordinary repertoire, played for the most part with seeming indifference from the orchestra, but nonetheless calculated to delight the opening night audience.
The audience was awash with the most famous, rich, and powerful glitterati of Washington’s High Society; the politicians, bankers, CEOs, lobbyists, entrepreneurs, and jet-setters who ambled their way into the concert hall with unbelievable lateness, holding up the performance until a quarter after the hour. Even then late arrivers were still being seated after each selection, right up until the intermission. I suppose it is difficult to tear one’s self away from the pre-concert cocktail parties with so much high-powered networking going on. After all, the opening night audience had raised more that a million dollars for the NSO in contributions and obviously felt they could be seated whenever they were ready to do so! It was indeed eye-catching to see so much jewelry, designer gowns, and bare shoulders. Even the ladies of the orchestra abandoned their traditional concert black attire to play in an array of colorful evening gowns replete with plunging necklines, décolletage, and more bare shoulders. With this sort of a backdrop to the evening, I was actually glad the program did not attempt anything heavier than the Chopin concerto, which itself is rather on the light side.
Considering that Washington, D.C. is the Capital of the United States, I found it somewhat shocking that Maestro Fischer did not commence the evening with the playing of the National Anthem. In my forty some years of attending opening nights at the NSO or, for that matter, the Washington National Opera, I have always heard it played. I will assume that Fischer, being Hungarian, is not “in tune” with this long-standing American tradition for opening nights.
Glinka’s overture to his second opera Russlan and Ludmilla, which opened the concert was arguably the orchestra’s best playing of the evening. It is a bravura overture with some very difficult writing for the strings in particular. It was performed with breath-taking speed, style, and panache. The rest of the evening’s playing from the orchestra ranged from “ho-hum” to somewhat sloppy. Maestro Fischer did not achieve tight control over the orchestra and they did not always seem to understand what he wanted. He seems to exude a great deal of energy in his outward manner but the orchestra did not respond likewise. His predecessors Mstislav Rostropovich and Leonard Slatkin drew an exceedingly lush sound from the strings. The sound that Maestro Fischer drew from them was rather thin and undernourished. The Dance of the Seven Veils would have really benefited from a richer string sound. As it was it had no lushness whatever.
The highpoints of the evening, and they were indeed stellar, came from the two extraordinary soloists. Violinist József Lendvay, Jr. is a throwback to the great violinists of the 19th century. His virtuoso playing evoked another time and era. The tone he draws from his violin is meltingly sweet and his dazzling passagework in the alarmingly difficult Zigeunerweisen of Sarasate made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I could have listened to him all evening. He received an immediate and well-deserved standing ovation.
The genius of young Evgeny Kissen is now well known to most concertgoers. He has appeared many times in recital in Washington, D.C., but this was his début performance with the NSO. The tender and plangent melodies of the Chopin second concerto became magic in his hands. By maintaining a certain intellectual aloofness he never slipped into over sentimentality and yet he delivered the music with great poignancy and deliciousness. He also received a standing ovation, and it must be said that it was his playing that really made the evening worthwhile.
The program concluded with a deplorable rendition of Johann Strauss’s Blue Danube Waltz. Whatever Maestro Fischer was trying to convey, with his rubato tempo of the great melody, the orchestra, even on the second go-round, did not understand it. I wondered if it had been rehearsed at all. One might expect a Hungarian to have a better way with a Strauss waltz.
A final surprise came when the orchestra played as an encore a Slavonic Dance by Antonin Dvorak. And by surprise I mean the orchestra all of a sudden returned to the brilliance of playing it gave in the opening overture by Glinka. Go figure! The audience, it must be said, seemed to enjoy everything, and for the third time that evening gave yet another standing ovation. I myself will look for more consistent playing and sturdier repertoire as the season progresses.
The National Symphony Orchestra
Micaele Sparacino
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