Washington Classical Review

Nurit Bar-Josef and David Hardy were soloists in Brahms’ Double Concerto with Gianandrea Noseda conducting the National Symphony Orchestra Thursday night at the Kennedy Center. Photo: C. Downey

Gianandrea Noseda made a touching gesture with the third program in the National Symphony Orchestra’s mini-celebration of the music of Johannes Brahms. After a youthful piano concerto and some choral rarities, Noseda concluded Thursday night with the German composer’s last work for orchestra, the Double Concerto. Rather than featuring guest soloists, like the 2007 performance with Renaud and Gautier Capuçon, this remained a family affair of a different kind.

Noseda turned to two of his orchestra’s leaders of long standing, expressing his confidence in them. Nurit Bar-Josef has served as concertmaster since her appointment by Leonard Slatkin in 2001. Cellist David Hardy first joined the NSO as associate principal in 1981, under Mstislav Rostropovich, and then was named principal in 1994, again by Slatkin.

The intimacy was enhanced by the undersized audience, small in number but vociferous in their appreciation, which had managed to make it to the Kennedy Center Concert Hall. The NSO’s regular Thursday program was nearly sidelined by another event, a VIP screening of the documentary Melania. Road closures and a lengthy security check, necessary for the attendance of President Trump and other dignitaries, made it difficult to reach the Concert Hall.

The first movement opened with the concerto’s only cadenzas, first for cello and then for violin. Both felt quite dramatic and daring, particularly Hardy’s warm, burnished tone on the tender secondary theme. Noseda deferred to his pair of soloists with a pleasingly elastic rhythmic sense, allowing them room to coordinate their overlapping lines. Some virtuosic details disappointed at times, like complex double-stops and intonation at range extremes, but overall this proved an intense and musical interpretation.

The high point was the second movement, its main melody in octaves placed right in the sweet spot of both performers’ best tone. In the middle section, Bar-Josef answered Hardy’s growling lines with glowing sweetness. The folk-like main theme of the third movement bounced elegantly in the hands of both soloists, answered with bravura by Noseda and the amassed orchestra.

Noseda continues to bring unexpected repertoire to local audiences and the second half offered Alexander Scriabin, a welcome diversion from the usual fare. Following Scriabin’s Poem of Ecstasy, heard last season under guest conductor Karina Canellakis, Noseda revived the visionary Russian composer’s Third Symphony, known as “Le Divin Poème.” The NSO had not played the work in over eighty years, back when it was favored by the NSO’s founding music director, Hans Kindler.

The score is a sprawling romantic canvas of splashed colors, philosophical mysticism, and torrid passion. Noseda observed every detail carefully, down to the specific, massive numbers of string players stipulated by Scriabin. The five trumpets, three trombones, and tuba gave stentorian force to the work’s somber main theme, first heard in the brief introduction to the first movement (“Luttes”).

The struggles depicted in the first movement, according to Scriabin, involved “the growth of the human spirit as it is freed from legends and mysteries.” The soaring sound of the massed violins and the triumphant climaxes powered by brass had cinematic sweep. Noseda brought out important themes with care, with some lovely figuration from the two harpists in more delicate moments.

Scriabin had broken away from religious tradition himself, moving to Geneva after leaving his first wife. He took up with his former student, Tatiana Fyodorovna Schlözer, who became his second wife and accompanied him to Paris for the 1905 premiere of this symphony. She was likely the inspiration for the sensuous second movement (“Voluptés”), which opened with a breathy, low flute melody. The large woodwind section provided a blurred tableau of vivid and varied bird calls in the central section, with heated violin solos from associate concertmaster Ying Fu.

A pleasing crackle of trumpet characterized the rapid launch of the third movement (“Jeu divin”). Noseda and the NSO sculpted the many dynamic summits, again making the most of the massive instrumentation arrayed on the stage. There is so much for the ear’s delectation, and Noseda managed to keep the energy level consistently high, differentiating the sections of music from one another to avoid a sameness of sound and volume. After the final appearance of that ominous opening brass theme from the first movement, now defeated, the performance concluded in a blaze of full-throated C major harmony.

Noseda, in his introduction to the Scriabin piece, admitted that he and the musicians drew inspiration from just seeing the audience, those few who had persevered in attending despite the logistical challenges. The listeners seemed similarly buoyed up by the presence of the musicians, in such numbers, pursuing the joy that comes from reaching the heights of musical expression.

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