Canellakis returns to NSO with rapturous program
Alban Gerhardt performed Dvořák‘s Cello Concerto Thursday night with Karina Canellakis conducting the National Symphony Orchestra Thursday night at the Kennedy Center. Photo: Charles Downey/WCR
Karina Canellakis returned to the National Symphony Orchestra with a program of surging Romantic music. The American conductor’s program, heard in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall Thursday night, combined Dvořák’s emotional Cello Concerto and the Prelude and Liebestod from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde with Scriabin’s The Poem of Ecstasy, a work that strives for an even wilder sense of euphoria.
Alban Gerhardt received a much bigger canvas with the Dvořák than Bloch’s Schelomo, which he played with the NSO in 2018. After a slightly scattered orchestral introduction to the first movement, Canellakis got the NSO back on track for the aching secondary theme, played with tender rapture by principal hornist Abel Pereira. Gerhardt excelled in the same musical idea, drawing an ardent tone from his 1710 Matteo Goffriller cello.
The piece demands a searing full-throated tone from the soloist at other crucial points, which Gerhardt also delivered, from broad multi-string chords to a searing A string sound. Only the double-stopped section higher in his range gave the German cellist some pause, causing some intonation issues here and there. The NSO brass crowned the first movement with splendid fanfares that sparked applause from the audience.
Both orchestra and cellist excelled in the extended slow movement, with the woodwind section showing its refinement in the opening, especially the clarinets on their gently wafting theme. Gerhardt brought his comfort with solo recital repertory to the dulcet solo parts of this movement. His tendency to push and pull the tempo kept Canellakis, a fine accompanist, on her toes in keeping the ensemble with him, a quicksilver, romantic touch.
The tempo of the last movement did not quite gel at first between soloist and conductor. More intonation issues cropped up in Gerhadt’s playing, generally at the high end of the writing. This caused some clashes with the violin solos played by associate concertmaster Ying Fu, who sat in the top chair all evening. (The weeks-long absence of concertmaster Nurit Bar-Josef continued, a leave acknowledged by the NSO press office, with no reason officially given.)
The high point of the last movement, in line with Gerhardt’s strengths, was the final quiet passage for the soloist. This poignant section, featuring Dvořák’s quotation of his song “Leave Me Alone,” was a tribute to his sister-in-law, Josefina Kaunitzova, who became ill and died as the composer completed the concerto.
Gerhardt capped the expressive nature of his performance with a Bach encore. (“Cellists always play Bach as an encore,” he quipped by way of introduction.) The Prelude from the Solo Cello Suite No. 6, with its exploration of the instrument’s ultra-high range (possibly written for an instrument with an extra fifth string), proved an exquisite farewell.
Karina Canellakis conducted the National Symphony Orchestra in music of Dvořák, Wagner and Scriabin Thursday night.
Canellakis opened the Tristan excerpts with a promising intensity, a slow pacing bringing out the most soulful sound in the cello section’s yearning lines. The NSO surged as Wagner’s scoring increased, with the violas trading arching lines with the oboe. Canellakis tended toward rushing the tempi perhaps too much, which robbed some of the climaxes of their potential potency, especially in the Liebestod section
No such problems with the Scriabin, a 20th-century highlight like Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra, which was the pinnacle of Canellakis’s extraordinary NSO debut back in 2022. Over twenty minutes of heavy-breathing overindulgence, the chief conductor of the Radio Filharmonisch Orkest pulled out all the stops. At the same time, wherever she could, she held back some textures to reveal glimmers of mysterious sound inside the score.
Canellaki’s impetuous pacing, which had not quite worked in the Wagner that preceded it, suited this mystical work, written under the influence of radical theosophical ideas. The pairing with Wagner cleverly revealed similarities to Tristan, not least in its opening section, set in the same 6/8 meter and marked Languido. Fine solos contributed by violinist Ying Fu and principal cellist David Hardy offered intimate scenes along the way.
The immense brass section produced staggering waves of sound, not least the exceptionally rhapsodic playing of principal trumpeter William Gerlach, often in antiphonal cascading lines with his colleagues. As the piece built to its ecstatic conclusion, huge tubular bells resounded and the pipes of the Kennedy Center’s Rubenstein Family Organ thundered under the hands (and feet) of William Neal.
After so much ambiguous whole-tone harmony, the building blocks of Scriabin’s mystic chord, a mighty blast of C major triad shook the rafters in the concluding measures. Mark it another triumph for Karina Canellakis that this mammoth score had an impact “like a bath of ice, cocaine and rainbows,” as the writer Henry Miller, an ardent Scriabin fan, once put it.
The program will be repeated 11:30 a.m. Friday and 8 p.m. Saturday. kennedy-center.org
2 Responses to “Canellakis returns to NSO with rapturous program”
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Posted Apr 11, 2025 at 4:12 pm by Mather Pfeiffenberger
I have heard from a pretty reliable source that Nurit Bar-Josef injured her hand while walking her dog and that the hand is still undergoing rehabilitation.
Posted Apr 11, 2025 at 4:48 pm by Deirdre Crowley
Nurit is recovering from surgery (her wrist or arm I was told by a reliable Kennedy Center employee). Looking forward to her return!