Washington Classical Review

Gianandrea Noseda conducted the NSO in music of Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich Thursday night. Photo: Stefano Pasqualetti

The National Symphony Orchestra devoted this week’s program to two giants of the Russian repertoire, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Dmitri Shostakovich. Music director Gianandrea Noseda, who spent some formative years in Russia under Valery Gergiev, led both works with equal parts poise and fire Thursday night in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall.

This was the first performance by the NSO since President Trump’s surprise announcement that he had decided to close the Kennedy Center for two years starting in July. The news blindsided the orchestra, who learned that they would be hunting for a temporary new home at the same time the rest of the world did. With no acrimony, the NSO took the stage with their accustomed professionalism and got down to business, first playing the national anthem for the large crowd.

Behzod Abduraimov made a blazing NSO debut as soloist in Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1. The display of technical acumen and musical sensitivity measured up to the expectations set by the Uzbek pianist’s astounding performance of this concerto with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in 2023. Throughout the three movements, Noseda and his soloist seemed entirely in sync with one another, and the NSO likewise exuded confidence.

In the cadenzas of the first movement, Abduraimov displayed rock-solid accuracy, driven by an edgy vitality. The sections in octaves boomed, able to equal the orchestra in volume, but the melting rubato he applied to the poignant second theme proved equally impressive. When the primary melody went to members of the orchestra, like the lovely flute solo, Abduraimov looked up and accompanied with great sensitivity.

Behzod Abduraimov performed Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with the NSO Thursday night.

More solos from flute and cellist David Hardy were high points of the second movement, marked by excellent intonation in often exposed parts. Abduraimov danced away with the Prestissimo middle section, based on a French vaudeville theme, a dizzying array of notes played light as a feather and with remarkably varied shape and texture.

Abduraimov dispatched the Finale with invulnerable virtuosity, but when he wanted to make expressive turns and hesitations, Noseda and the NSO remained in step with him. Few performances of this chestnut of a concerto have seemed so full of surprise, so much so that toward the end, Noseda dropped his baton accidentally. Abduraimov is a musician Washington audiences will want to hear.

To underscore that point, the pianist offered as encore one of the most daunting pieces in the repertoire, the third of Franz Liszt’s six Grandes études de Paganini, known as “La Campanella” (The little bell). Each of the many variations of the main theme featured thornier and thornier technical complications, all rendered with remarkable finesse in a true tour de force.

The NSO had its own tour de force in the second half, given over to Shostakovich’s mammoth Eighth Symphony, last heardfrom the ensemble in 2017. So much of the weight of grief in the work depends on the strings, which provided warmth and intensity from the fate motif that opens the first movement. Noseda drew special attention to the somber sonorities of the low strings, and the cataclysms of sound, preceded by menacing drum rolls, seared the ear. Toward the end, the mournful English horn silenced the violence with an elegiac solo.

Noseda’s brisk pacing gave the second movement, both march and scherzo, the feel of patriotic fervor parodied. Pushed to a manic edge, with woodwinds in hysterics, it seemed a reminder of the forced patriotism demanded of Russian composers in the Stalin era.

The third movement, possibly an evocation of the horrors of the Battle of Stalingrad, got off to a rough start with the violas not quite together on their fast opening motif. The movement quickly got back on track, with obsessive accents creating a grotesque air of black comedy. A sparkly trumpet solo, alluding perhaps to Rossini’s Overture from William Tell, and echoes of the “Sabre Dance” from Khachaturian’s ballet Gayane heightened the absurdity.

In the fourth movement, the somber Passacaglia unfolded starkly, with variations graced by a powerful horn solo, tense moments from the piccolo, and insect-like buzzing from the flutter-tongued flutes. The fifth movement seemed less triumphant than merely grateful to have survived. A joyous fugal section culminated in a return of the noisy, drum-driven clamor from earlier in the symphony. Self-assured bassoon solos helped lead the way back to the calm aureole of C major where the symphony concluded.

The program will be repeated 11:30 a.m. Friday and 8 p.m. Saturday. kennedy-center.org