The audience arriving for Thursday’s concert by the National Symphony Orchestra got a surprise. To enter the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, one had to pass through a bank of metal detectors, a sure sign of a relatively rare occurrence for the NSO, a VIP in the hall. In attendance for Gianandrea Noseda’s latest all-Russian program were Vice-President JD Vance and his wife, Usha, greeted less than cordially with a sustained chorus of loud booing.

Before all the excitement, it seemed possible that Noseda would acknowledge the death of pre-eminent Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina, announced earlier that morning, perhaps by playing a brief piece of hers. Given the half-hour delay to the start of the performance, due to the presence of the Secret Service’s charge, any extra music would have lengthened the evening even more.

Violinist Leonidas Kavakos took the stage, silencing the unrest, two weeks after an extraordinary chamber program with pianist Daniil Trifonov in this hall. Two years since his last solo stand with the NSO, playing Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 1, the Greek violinist gave a burning, even vitriolic rendition of the same composer’s Violin Concerto No. 2, the last concerto Shostakovich completed, from 1967.

Kavakos returned with the “Willemotte” Stradivarius he acquired in 2017, an instrument made in 1734 he had long coveted, and with which he has formed an extraordinary bond. In the sometimes difficult acoustic of the Concert Hall, which can swallow up smaller voices, Kavakos projected his vibrant, even explosive tone on this violin with ease, filling up the vast space.

Shostakovich composed both of his violin concertos for his friend, Russian violinist David Oistrakh. In the second concerto, he seemed to be searching for an entirely different mode of expression: the orchestral scoring is often chamber-like, pairing the soloist with an infinite range of unusual timbres, including the tense pulsing of a tom-tom.

Kavakos approached the moderately paced first movement with a freedom of rhythmic pulse, striking the many double-stops with fierce accuracy. The secondary theme featured a warm interplay of the soloist with piccolo and horn. After summoning savage strength in the louder passages, Kavakos created a pool of calm in the cadenza, tracing the contrapuntal lines with utter clarity, into which principal horn player Abel Pereira wove his own elegant thread.

His instrument’s potent G string resonated in the second movement, around which flute and clarinet spun countermelodies in a stark lamentation. Kavakos impressed no less in the glowing upper range of the piece, moving into the stratosphere with grace. After a brief cadenza-like moment from Kavakos, accompanied by timpani, Pereira’s elegiac closing horn solo, polished across a broad range, led the music into radiant D-flat major.

After a quirky transition, again with the violin answered by raucous horns, Kavakos launched into a relentless reading of the third and final movement. Noseda, with crisply signaled metric shifts, helped the NSO shape a quick-footed accompaniment, bursting out of its banks in the tutti moments. Kavakos did not let down during the extended cadenza, always pacing the momentum forward, crowning an athletic performance laced with bitterness.

For an encore, Kavakos offered a prayer from the Bible of music, the Largo movement from Bach’s Solo Violin Sonata No. 3. The quiet moments of this interpretation, again showing off the sensitive side of the “Willemotte” Stradivarius, offered an antidote to the political rancor earlier in the evening.

For the second half, Noseda turned to Stravinsky’s vivid ballet score Petrushka, in the 1947 revision for slightly smaller orchestral forces. Since the scenario opens in the chaos of a Shrovetide Fair, the piece recalled Guillaume Connesson’s Maslenitsa, played by the NSO last month. Piccolo and the cello section vied with brash tunes in the opening scene, followed by surreal woodwind peeps and chirps in the music simulating an organ grinder.

Loud drum beats signaled the scene changes, with the flatulent notes of bassoon and contrabassoon marking the entrance of the Magician from his puppet theater. The Magician’s magical flute, brought to life in Aaron Goldman’s refined solo, animated the three puppets: the Moor, the Ballerina, and sad-faced Petrushka. Noseda chose tempos and calibrated balances for maximum clarity, perhaps misjudging only the Russian Dance music, which moved a notch too fast for comfort, especially in the part for solo piano.

Stravinsky’s command of mysterious sonorities in the orchestration of this score came across in all its technicolor glory. Petrushka’s enigmatic theme, a bitonal juxtaposition of two unrelated harmonies, competed with the more exotic music of the Moor and the dreamy dance of the Ballerina. Principal trumpeter William Gerlach played with bravado in the many demanding solos, from the comic march to the polished waltz.

The entrance of the dancing bear, a highlight of the score, featured a braying high clarinet solo, answered by growling cellos and double-basses. As the revelers got drunker and rowdier, the music tilted into madness, with the Moor puppet, now come to life, chasing and killing Petrushka. From start to finish, Noseda led a compelling performance that narrated, in almost visual ways, the twists and turns of this strange story.

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

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