Leonard Slatkin, former music director of the National Symphony Orchestra, returned to the Kennedy Center Thursday night to lead a program featuring Emanuel Ax.

Now 75, Ax occupies his perch as an elder statesman of American pianists with a self-effacing charm and unassuming authority. His touch at the keyboard produces a consistent weight and rounded tone that gives the impression of a seamlessness between each note, a distinctive quality that draws one into his playing. 

For the brooding Allegro of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, the interiority of Ax’s solo playing made for a disarming contrast with the high dramatic pitch of the orchestra. Even as the drama began to spill over into the piano part in the cadenza and close of the Allegro, Ax dispatched pearly runs and more involved passages with a quiet fluidity that maintained a dreamy distance.

Ax brought a noble sense of phrasing to the middle Romanza movement, though Slatkin answered with too stately a sense of pace where the orchestra needs to maintain more momentum in the outer sections. A keen sense of flow returned for the propulsive Rondo finale, with Ax delivering a refined tempest in the piano part. As an encore, Ax gave an intimate reading of Liszt’s arrangement of Schubert’s song “Standchen,” skillfully realizing Liszt’s conceit of capturing in one instrument the interplay between voice and accompanist.

 

The second half featured William Walton’s Symphony No. 1 in B-flat minor. Slatkin’s long association with the composer was evident in a focused and absorbing performance. The opening Allegro was an exercise in restraint and release, Slatkin corralling the unruly sections into a series of potent climaxes. In the intricate Presto, the orchestra made feverish work of fluttering figures in the strings and winds over pinpoint interjections from the brass. The driving tempo was consistent with the evocative instruction “con malizia,” though Slatkin also captured winking passages where the malice transforms into a sense of rollicking glee.

The Andante con malinconia pits heavy strings against a dirge-like thrum in the rest of the orchestra. Slatkin demonstrated a sure hand in shaping this despondent material into a powerful pinnacle for the expressive NSO strings. Though Sibelius is often cited as a key influence for this 1935 work, the finale seemed particularly in debt to the symphonies of Carl Nielsen in its anxious halting figures, obsessive subversion of expectations, and of course, the Maestoso finale’s dueling timpani. Slatkin relished the sunnier tone that emerges in this final movement, the same tense competition between sections from the first movement now fueling a triumphant conclusion.

The evening was bookended by two pieces with a personal connection for Slatkin. The opening work, Double Play for Orchestra was composed by his spouse Cindy McTee and quotes some of Slatkin’s own work. Titled “The Unquestioned Answer” in a nod to Charles Ives, the first movement brings components of the huge orchestra (percussion, horns, string) together in uneasy juxtaposition, punctuated by lyrical flute and violin solos. The deliberate effects in this static first section are firmly upended in the infectious second movement, a jazz-inflected romp that slyly suggests a sort of deconstructed mashup of the Sharks’ music from West Side Story. 

At the end of the evening, Slatkin offered an encore with the orchestra of an arrangement from the score of the 1943 film “Song of Bernadette” based on work by Slatkin’s father, who had a long career in Hollywood. The arrangement by Felix Slatkin and Ricky Marino, and orchestrated by McTee, featured ravishing solos for Concertmaster Nurit Bar-Josef and principal cellist David Hardy.

The program will be repeated 8 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday. kennedy-center.org/nso

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