National Symphony tickets on sale for $13

Storm Large will sing The Seven Deadly Sins with the National Symphony Orchestra April 28 and 29, 2016/National Symphony Orchestra

You must buy a minimum of three tickets (total = $39 @ $13 each) to get the National Symphony seats at this whoppingly discounted price.  Although the sales price has gone up a little ($2 each) over recent years, it's still a grand deal! 

And there are no handling charges.

Alban Gerhardt will play Elgar's Cellist Concerto in a program with Sir James MacMillan conducting interludes from his opera, The Sacrifice, with the National Symphony Orchestra May 12 and 13, 2016/National Symphony Orchestra

No Saturday night seats are available for $13, but there are Thursday nights, some Fridays, and two Friday "coffee concerts" at 11:30 a.m.

The offer ends Feb. 26 and may be withdrawn at any time.

Leila Josefowicz will play Salonen's Violin Concerto with the National Symphony Orchestra June 2 and 3, 2016/National Symphony Orchestra

For more dollars ($23 or $33 per ticket) you may purchase "prime orchestra" and "premium orchestra" seats.

What a deal! 

All seats are on the orchestra level, and here's the skinny:

Go to nationalsymphony.org/triple play (I've never been able to get it to work) and buy a minimum of three seats and check out, or call 202-416-8500 Monday - Friday, 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. Be sure to mention the "Triple Play" deal.

The sales dates and guest artists are:

Mar. 3 and Mar. 4 (Thursday and Friday eves): Christoph Eschenbach conducting Bruch and two Prokofiev symphonies, with violinist Ray Chen and harpist Adriana Horne.

Mar. 10 and 11 (Thursday eve and Friday morning): Eschenbach conducts works by Brahms and Picker with pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet who plays Liszt.
 

Mar. 17 and 18 (great way to celebrate St. Paddy's Day; wear green!) (Thursday and Friday eves), however, all $13 seats for both performances are sold out.  Pricier tickets remain. Osmo Vänskä conducts Beethoven's Symphony No. 6 with pianist Nikolai Lugansky playing Brahms.

Mar. 31 and April 1 (Thursday and Friday morning): Cristian Macelaru conducting works by Fauré, Jalbert, and Debussy. Violinist Nikolaj Znaider plays Brahms. 

April 7 only (Thursday eve): Nikolaj Znaider conducting Mahler's Symphony No. 1, and pianist Benjamin Grosvenor playing Mozart.

 

April 14 and 15 (Thursday and Friday eves): Hugh Wolff, conducting works by Barber and Ives with violinist Anne Akiko Meyers who will play Bates. The Friday night performance will start at 9 p.m. and feature an abbreviated show and "party" of sorts called DECLASSIFIED: The B-Sides with Mason Bates and "a sampling of his most innovative hits."

 

April 28 and 29 (Thursday and Friday eves): James Gaffigan conducting works by Rodgers, Dvorák, and Ravel, with Storm Large singing Weill's The Seven Deadly Sins. Another Friday night "party" with abbreviated show starting at 9 p.m.:  DECLASSIFIED: Cabaret of Sin with Large and Hudson Shad performing tunes of "a sweet and sultry mix."

 

May 5 and 6 (Thursday and Friday eves): Andrew Litton conducting Shostakovich's Symphony No. 11, and violinist Vadim Gluzman playing Tchaikovsky.

May 12 and 13 (Thursday and Friday eves): Sir James MacMillan conducting Vaughan Williams, three Interludes from MacMillan's own The Sacrifice, and cellist Alban Gerhardt playing Elgar.

 

June 2 and 3 (Thursday and Friday eves): Eschenbach conducting works by Haydn and Schumann, and violinist Leila Josefowicz who will play Salonen.

 

June 9 and 10 (Thursday and Friday eves): Eschenbach conducting Bruckner's Symphony No. 4, and Nathalie Stutzmann singing Mahler. 

What: The National Symphony Orchestra in concert

Where: The Kennedy Center, 2700 F Street, NW Washington, D.C. 20566

How much: Minimum $39 for three tickets (or $66 or $99). No handling charge.

 

Metro station: Foggy Bottom. You may ride one of the free burgundy shuttles from Foggy Bottom to KenCen or walk it (10 minutes). The shuttles are at the top of the escalators.


For more information: 202-416-8500


patricialesli@gmail.com

 

 

 

 

 

Rachmaninoff and Edgar Allan Poe star with the National Symphony Orchestra

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)/Wikipedia

Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943)/Wikipedia

 

My favorite composers were on the National Symphony Orchestra program Thursday night, and if you rush today, you can hear them tonight.

It was practically an all Russian evening, from the guest conductor, Vassily Sinaisky (who never used a baton), to composers Sergei  Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) and Alexander Borodin (1833-1887), to the vocalists, guest soprano, Dina Kuznetsova, and tenor, Sergey Semishkur.

Other nations represented on the platform, besides Americans who are members of the Choral Arts Society of Washington, the NSO, and Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), were guest tenor, Elchin Azizov from Azerbaijan, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) of Austria. 

Beginning the program was NSO's first performance of Borodin's Overture to Prince Igor, which began solemnly enough but soon gave way to vigorous double bass, building to a climax in a piece whose authorship is uncertain, according to the program.  (By day, Borodin was a professor of chemistry who had little time for composition, but around-the-clock he was an advocate of women's rights, founding the School of Medicine for Women in St. Petersburg.)

A NSO star, Loren Kitt, splendidly played the familiar but always welcome, Mozart's Concerto in A major for Clarinet and Orchestra, K. 622, in an almost nonchalant fashion, totally unruffled by the audience in front of him, and cleaning his instrument before he began, while the orchestra played on behind him.

The best composition of the night belonged to the second half of the program and Rachmaninoff's interpretation of Poe's The Bells: sleigh bells, wedding bells, alarm bells, and mournful bells, following life's trajectory, from childhood to adulthood to the grave, Poe's words augmented by those of Russian poet, Konstantin Balmont (1867-1942) as in "The Silver Sleigh Bells":

And their dreaming is a gleaming that a perfumed air exhales,
And their thoughts are but a shining,
And a luminous divining
Of the singing and the ringing, that a dreamless peace foretells.

From "The Mellow Wedding Bells":

Hear the mellow wedding bells,
Golden bells!
What a world of tender passion their melodious voice foretells!

From "The Loud Alarum Bells":

Yet we know
By the booming and the clanging,
By the roaring and the twanging,
How the danger falls and rises like the tides that ebb and flow

From "The Mournful Iron Bells":

What a world of desolation in their iron utterance dwells!
And we tremble at our doom,
As we think upon the tomb,
Glad endeavour quenched for ever in the silence and the gloom.

The beauty of The Bells was magnified by the voices of Choral Arts Society (under the direction of Scott Tucker and composed of 130 members, a few more women than men, my count) and the guests performers named above, so eloquent and professional in their deliveries, one could think of no better singers to be hired for such an occasion.

(Have you ever heard of the "celesta," one of three keyboards played in Bells?  Neither has Dorling-Kindersley, Limited, which published the Complete Classical Music Guide (2012) or David Pogue and Scott Speck, authors of Classical Music for Dummies (1997), who all omit the instrument defined in the American Heritage Dictionary as "a keyboard and metal plates struck by hammers (! (editor's addition)) that produce bell-like tones."  To the untrained, it makes sounds like one might imagine a grownup's toy piano would.  Delightful!  What a nice girl's name to bestow. Akin to "celestial.")

Who would have thought the night would become so glorious, and to think I just picked the performance for my #1 love, Rachmaninoff!

(Update:  At a later event I met a Russian scholar who told me if Poe were any other nationality besides American, he thought Poe would have been Russian, based on Poe's temperament. This was a man who said he read Poe's complete works every summer when he visited his grandmother.)

(Questions: Where were the floral arrangements usually found at the end of the aisles at the stage, and why were the first two rows of seats kept empty of concertgoers?)


What:  Borodin, Mozart, Poe, and Rachmaninoff

When:  Tonight, 8 p.m.

Where:  John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington, D.C.

Admission:  Tickets start at $10.

Duration:  About two hours with one 15 minute intermission

For more information: 202-467-4600

patricialesli@gmail.com

 

Skies light up after timpanist plays at the Kennedy Center

At the Kennedy Center guests who attend performances by the National Symphony Orchestra see and hear shows indoors and out/Photo by Patricia Leslie

At intermission Tuesday night, guests attending the National Symphony Orchestra performance streamed out onto the veranda at the Kennedy Center to catch a breath of fresh air, to sip beverages, admire the scenery, and praise the performance of timpanist Jauvon Gilliam who had just finished, in vigorous fashion, Timpani Concerto No. 1, "The Olympian," by James Oliverio (b. 1956).

Jauvon Gilliam/Photo from blogs.Kennedy-Center.org

At the conclusion of the piece moments earlier in the Concert Hall, the composer came up on stage and joined Mr. Gilliam and guest conductor Thomas Wilkins to receive enthusiastic applause and shouts of "Bravo!" from the audience.

Mr. Gilliam, the NSO's principal timpanist and also guest principal timpanist for the Budapest Festival Orchestra, had pounded the eight kettledrums which encircled him at the front of the stage, swirling in his chair and making music with what seemed like four hands.  He waved his sticks like a juggler tossing flames, with arms that sometimes flashed behind him.

The combinations of jazz, dance, Duke Ellington, and George Gershwin made for a spectacular presentation in the inauguration of the NSO's series "New Moves:  symphony + dance," the latter expertly supplied by members of Katie Smythe's New Ballet Ensemble from Memphis. 

Now in its eleventh year, the New Ballet comprises children from different social and economic backgrounds, those who cannot afford to pay for dance training and those who can, to learn professional dance on their way to stage careers.  Several alums have already made it up.

Thomas Wilkins, conductor of the Omaha National Symphony and principal guest conductor for the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, had no trouble leading the NSO. Indeed, every time he turned around to face the audience, a broad smile brightened his face.

Thomas Wilkins/Photo from the Omaha Symphony Orchestra

Selections from Porgy and Bess by George Gershwin (1898-1937) with arrangement by Robert Russell Bennett (1894-1981) got the show off to a stellar start, leading me to wonder if the best was saved for first, but it was an introduction to all the evening's finery which lay ahead, including the fantastic Martin Luther King from a ballet composition, Three Black Kings by Duke Ellington (1899-1974) and arranged by Luther Henderson (1919-2003). Ellington died before he finished Kings, and his son, Mercer, completed the piece. 

(Up against the night's competition, Souvenirs, Op. 28 by Samuel Barber (1910-1981) was a trifle uninteresting.)

All this served to build anticipation for the night's climax, the debut of Ellington's Harlem ballet, commissioned by the NSO and the Kennedy Center.

New Ballet Ensemble dance Harlem with the National Symphony Orchestra at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts/Photo by Scott Suchman

Dressed in Sunday clothes for Harlem's streets (except for one lass wearing a long dress who may have just stepped off the train from Kansas), the young performers exuded confidence and grace that belied their years and made viewers aware of their futures as career performers.

The choreography had some gaps, namely, the frequent freezes-in-positions which left the majority of the nine dancers stationary and motionless while one, two, or three colleagues twirled around them.  The ballet was far more enjoyable when all nine danced, like the old-fashioned way.

I wondered what a Porgy and Bess ballet would be like and discovered the Dallas Black Dance Theatre brought it to the Kennedy Center in 1998.

The combination dance and music series continues this weekend with compositions by John Adams and Aaron Copland and performances by violinist Leila Josefowicz and Jessica Lang's Dance Company.

This summer will find Maestro Wilkins, a Norfolk, Virginia native, in the area again when he conducts the NSO at Wolf Trap August 2 with guest artist, Yo-Yo Ma.  At last check, only lawn spaces remained.  Take your back brace.

patricialesli@gmail.com

Guest conductor falls ill at NSO

Rafael Fruhbeck de Burgos/photo from Columbia Artists Management, Inc.

Just before the nightingale's recorded song filled the Kennedy Center's Concert Hall last night, guest conductor Rafael Fruhbeck de Burgos, who has led the National Symphony Orchestra more than 200 times, dropped his hands, slumped at the podium, and stood with downcast head, his body supported by the railing, almost as if he had been overtaken by sleep.

The audience murmured faintly.

The musicians were in the middle of the third section of Pini di Roma by Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936) which the program said includes "a thrill in the air....a nightingale sings." The production slowed for just a few seconds, and notes softened. Near the maestro sat two female violinists, clearly stunned by the event.  They exchanged glances, immediately lay down their instruments, and rushed to the conductor's aid, helping him to a sitting position on the steps of the podium

As fast as cymbals chime, Mr. Fruhbeck's body straightened, he lifted his hand and baton, and from his sitting position where he remained for the duration of the piece, he led the performers through the last few minutes of Respighi's fiery finish.

When the music stopped, the conductor rose and stood without assistance, and facing the audience, placed his hand on his chest momentarily, acknowledging the orchestra members and the audience, and walked off the stage by himself.

The crowd clamored and cried to see him again who obliged the demands, returning to the stage without assistance to wave and accept gratitude from the well-wishers. He turned and walked off, but the vociferous crowd, which it had been all evening, wanted more.

Suddenly, the lead violinists, no doubt exhausted and emotionally wrung, quickly stood and literally marched off the stage ending the accolade from the packed house, fuller than I have seen it in a long time.

Throughout most of the evening's performance I had marveled at the hearty enthusiasm expressed by the audience, happy and glad to be at a concert on a Friday night with springtime advancing, robins chirping, and daffodils ready to parade their grace and color for Washingtonians to admire. (Good riddance, Winter!)

Earlier, before intermission, the guest pianist  who turned 23 on March 5 and was making his NSO debut, Daniil Trifonov, delivered a rousing "Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini" written by his Russian comrade, Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943). Mr. Trifonov's fingers moved up and down and away from the keyboard as fast as if he were touching a hot stove. He crouched over the piano like cradling a newborn. (You can never go wrong with Rachmaninoff.)

"Bravo!" the mostly standing audience shouted repeatedly at his finish, producing four encores which Trifonov answered energetically with an unusually lengthy, but well received, piece that may have been Chopin's Op. 18 Waltz. This led to three more encores after the encores, extending the evening's entertainment well past the customary terminal hour.

(I must mention Mr. Trifonov's apparel which was in keeping with our present relationship with his motherland: a black suit, white shirt, skinny black pencil tie, and hair which slung to the music.)

Daniell Trifonov/photo from www.classicalsource.com

Mr. Fruhbeck and Mr. Trifonov were not the only guest artists: Kelley O'Connor (not in green but wearing an elegant and stylish long black gown with halter top design) beautifully sang the love sick parts of Candelas from El amor brujo by Manuel de Falla (1876-1946) whose works Maestro Fruhbeck has recorded in their entirety.

Kelley O'Connor/photo from www.mask9.com

Ms. O'Connor's mezzo-soprano's voice was frequently almost overcome by the sounds of music. Probably because she has appeared with the National Symphony several times, the audience did not respond as enthusiastically as it does to most "newcomers."

Oh, and there was more entertainment: The delicious "Nuages" and "Fetes" from Nocturnes by Claude Debussy (1862-1918) began the evening.

Three long consecutive nights conducting at the Kennedy Center would be demanding tasks for anyone, let alone someone with the history of Rafael Fruhbeck de Burgos which includes 2011 Conductor of the Year by Musical America, the Gold Medal awarded by Vienna, "Emeritus Conductor" bestowed by the Spanish National Orchestra, and in the past year alone, he has led orchestras in New York, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Pittsburg, San Francisco, Detroit, Saint Louis, Houston, Seattle, among some cities. Not bad for an 80-year-old. 

The program repeats tonight.

patricialesli@gmail.com

 

National Symphony Orchestra tickets on sale for $11

Martin Frost will debut with the National Symphony Orchestra April 24 when he plays Aho's Clarinet Concerto/Photo by Mats Backer

Can you believe it?  For less than the price of a movie.

A mailing I received from the Kennedy Center says a minimum of any three concerts (certain dates and times) without a handling fee are all you need to buy to get $11 tickets.

You can get better seats for $22 or $33 each, depending upon the level where you want to sit, but since my purse is mean and lean, I'm going with the extra super-duper low price to beat all.

Timpanist Jauvon Gilliam will play Oliverio's Concerto No. 1 in a night of symphony and dance at NSO May 13/Photo by Margot Schulman

Okay, the details:  No Saturday nights, but there are plentiful Thursday and Friday nights available: Feb. 27-28, Mar. 13-14, Mar. 20-21, April 10-11, April 17-18, April 24-25, May 7-8 (Wednesday and Thursday), May 13 (Tuesday), May 16, June 5-6, and June 12-13. 

 

The programs are fantastic:   Beethoven, Debussy, Rachmaninoff, Strauss, Prokofiev, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Sibelius, Tchaikovsky, Bruckner, Gershwin, and Copland to name many of the composers.

Violinist Leila Josefowicz will join NSO in a night of symphony and dance when she plays Adams' Violin Concerto May 16/Photo by Henry Fair

The May programs feature "symphony and dance" like Bernstein's On the Waterfront (May 7-8),  The Three Faces of Duke Ellington (May 13), and Adams' Violin Concerto (May 16). 

Rush!  (Whew!  This puts me in one.)

James Conlon will conduct NSO April 10 and 11 in works by Zemlinsky, Korngold, and Brahms/Photo by Robert Millard

Log on to nationalsymphony.org/tripleplay and choose the Triple Play Subscription under NSO Classical. Make your selections and check out.  Last year I couldn't get online reservations to work for me so this year I called 202-416-8500, and "Billy" got me all signed up and squared away, pronto.  Thanks, Billy!

 

The offer ends February 21, 2014, and it can be withdrawn at any time.  Time's a fleetin'.  Enjoy the show!  (You know, don't you, about the free shuttle which runs about every 10 minutes from the Foggy Bottom Metro Station to Ken Cen?  And back.)


Patricialesli@gmail.com
 

 

A star-studded evening at the National Symphony Orchestra

Jean-Yves Thibaudet/Cincinnati Symphony.org

 

How was I so lucky to be able to attend the best performance of the year by the National Symphony Orchestra?  Or, at least, of the six concerts I heard?

My $11 seat three rows from the front at the Kennedy Center Friday night on the "piano side" was equivalent to a 50-yard chair when the Redskins play Dallas. 

Jean-Yves Thibaudet, born in Lyon, France in 1961 and "one of today's most sought after soloists," according to the program which quotes verbatim from his website, did dazzle with his performance of Camille Saint-Saens' Piano Concerto No. 5 in F major, Op. 103, "Egyptian."  His fingers raced up and down the keyboard faster than a fan's blades turn in summer, and the magical music we heard coming from the piano was truly astonishing, given the pounding inflected upon it by Thibaudet. He was up and down from the bench so frequently one guesses he never need exercise.

At the end the crowd roared, and the pianist, who has played around the world for three decades and recorded more than 50 albums, returned to the stage for three encores which ended the first part of the program.

At intermission in the aisle was a woman, about 80, complimenting Thibaudet's performance:  "I've traveled around the world," she said, and it was about time the National Symphony put on a really good show.  "Shut up," said the man (her husband?) as he guided her up the aisle with his hands on her shoulders.  "No one wants to hear you!"  (I was taken aback, more by him than by her.)

It was a spectacular evening, beginning with Edvard Grieg's familiar Peer Gynt, Suite No. 1, and ending with Witold Lutoslawski's Concerto for Orchestra. 

Krzysztof Urbanski was the guest conductor

 

The guest conductor making his NSO debut was Krzysztof Urbanski, the music director of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, the chief conductor for the Trondheim Symfoniorkester and the principal guest conductor of the Tokyo Symphony. Quite the showman himself who has won many awards and conducted all of Poland's major orchestras, Urbanski, age 29, was a a danseur at the podium to watch him weave and wave the baton and urge the orchestra to follow his commands.  His modern, upswept hair style might be worthy of an Oscar nomination.

Meanwhile,  Thibaudet's wardrobe, the program noted, was designed by Vivienne Westwood.  It included a diamond oblong belt buckle of about 2.5 by 1.5 inches, a diamond-filled emerald cut brooch (about 2 by 1 inches) hanging from a necklace, and a single diamond-studded earring. A black satin jacket and black patent-leather shoes complemented his score.

 

patricialesli@gmail.com

The National Symphony Orchestra sells what?

The National Symphony Orchestra led by Christoph Eschenbach/Carol Pratt

 

Responding to a query about a piece received in the mail over the weekend from the National Symphony Orchestra, the ticket office at the Kennedy Center knows nothing about "Tickets from $10 on sale now!"

“You are the second person to call about it this morning,” said the agent at the number listed on the card (202-467-4600, the KC’s ticket office). "I’ve already searched for her and came up with nothing. It doesn’t matter what the card says.” 

Oh, thanks.  Then what was the meaning of the mail piece?

"I can't tell you that.  What I can tell you is there are no $10 tickets on sale for the National Symphony Orchestra."

Then why go to the trouble and expense of printing and mailing a card?

“I don’t know,” she said. 

It made no sense to me, but maybe it does to you?

The color postcard says nothing about a subscription or a minimum number of tickets necessary to get the $10 seats, but it does list four upcoming concerts, artists, and dates and says:  "Start the NSO season with Eschenbach and world-class soloists!" 

Let's go!

patricialesli@gmail.com

 

Eschenbach, a musical Einstein at the podium

Christoph Eschenbach/Scott Suchman

Like a synchronized swimmer who lifts her arms up and out creating a cascade of water droplets in a flourish, Conductor Christoph Eschenbach majestically led the National Symphony Orchestra in an exquisite program last weekend, frequently bending slightly at the knee and raising his arms straight up to give notice to the musicians that he wanted flourish, and flourish he got.

With the wave of his baton and a sprinkling of music dust, the orchestra performed flawlessly (at least, to my ears).

When measures arrived for timpani, cymbals, and horns, Eschenbach gave a quick uptick with his body which said “right here and now!” and the musicians gleefully complied.  They seemed to love the instruction which paid off in the enthusiasm of the audience who was in rapture as well. 

.

From my third row seat with the perspective of a turtle looking up, I could only wish the Kennedy Center would allow me to photograph the maestro to adequately convey the rhythm and movements he exercised at the height of glory.

I became so wrung out and exhausted just watching from my statutory position “down below” (my eye level matched the shoes of the musicians) that I was certainly able to shed most of my dinner calories.  Talk about moving at your station, Michelle!

“Look at him,” said the woman behind me as Conductor Eschenbach slowly (and I mean slowly) approached the podium from offstage for yet another encore: “He can barely walk.”  It was true, and one wondered how sore he would be on the morrow when he had another concert to conduct.

Sitting beside me was most assuredly the fiancee? The sister? of the guest cellist, Claudio Bohorquez from Germany, for she of blonde hair and in flowered skirt leaped to her feet upon conclusion of Lalo's Cello Concerto in D minor, to clap madly for a few moments in a solo arrangement before other members of the audience joined to applaud Bohorquez's masterful play.

The rest of the program was excellent fare beginning with Overture, le carnaval romain by Berlioz and ending the evening with Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony.  It was a splendid night. 

Christoph Eschenbach/Jean Gaumy, Magnum Photos, Orchestre de Paris

Although the Metro was practically dysfunctional afterwards (Tysons Corner construction), and I had to share the late train with 200,000 Girl Scouts and their leaders and missed the last bus home, being forced to hail a taxi for a ride practically out to the Shenandoahs, was the evening worth it?

Mesdames and Messieurs, s'il vous plait!

Bien sur!

Bravo! Maestro Eschenbach!  Bravo! National Symphony Orchestra! 

patricialesliexam@gmail.com

The National Symphony Orchestra mixes contemporary and classical

 Conductor James Gaffigan by Margaretta K. Mitchell



Not Mozart nor Schumann nor guest pianist Ingrid Fliter could outshine the contemporary music of Fluss ohne Ufer ("Shoreless River") by German composer Detlev Glanert, a piece co-commissioned* and played by the National Symphony Orchestra in its U.S. debut last weekend at the Kennedy Center.

It was a full night at the NSO.

The youthful and energetic guest conductor, James Gaffigan, briefed the audience about the composition's background: It is about a shipwreck, love, a battle, and two occupants, one of whom was not supposed to be onboard. And the boat sinks. Mr. Gaffigan compared parts of it to Debussy and said the timing juxtaposed to last week's ship catastrophe off the coast of Italy was coincidental.

With ominous sounds, the basses quietly forebode the calamity about to occur.  Faint notes suggest the tension might be coming from offstage rather than from the orchestra itself, adding to the mystery. The music gradually transforms to produce scary images of a monster rising from the water's depths, giving Hitchcockian warning about the eminent tragedy.

Momentum builds to vibrant clashing and roar of waves. Cannons to right of them, cannons to left of them are heard with dynamic contributions from strings and horns adding to the ferocious ending which gradually converts to tranquility as water covers the boat, it sinks, and the music subsides to match the starting notes.

Mr. Glanert, 51, a native of Hamburg, helped the orchestra rehearse "Shoreless," Mr. Gaffigan said, and the composer was present for the Friday evening performance as well. When the orchestra finished playing his work, Mr. Glanert, smiling broadly, enthusiastically bounded upon stage to receive multiple ovations from the standing audience.

Composer Detlev Glanert

Ms. Fliter, who has performed with NSO every other year since 2008, played an audience favorite, Schumann's Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 54, her fingers flying like speedy spiders building webs back and forth across the keyboard. She bobbed up and down on the piano bench displaying vitality and enthusiasm one can only envy. 

Not to be overlooked, two of composer Mozart's works began and ended the evening: Divertimento in D major, K. 136 and Symphony No. 41 in C major, K. 551, "Jupiter," which turned out to be Mozart's last symphony. Program notes said nineteenth century critics began calling it "Jupiter" after the god, rather than the planet, presumably because of its "fugal finale" and emphasis on "stately trumpets and timpani." Timpani, finale, or sonata, a symphony orchestra can do no wrong with Mozart.

*Other co-commissioners of "Shoreless River" were Germany’s WDR-Cologne, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam, and the BBC for the BBC Proms in London.

Coming up:

What: A program of classical and contemporary music featuring soloist Jörg Widmann with Christoph Eschenbach conducting.

WIDMANN - Armonica

MOZART - Clarinet Concerto in A major, K. 622

SCHUBERT - Symphony No. 9 in C major, D. 944 "The Great"

When: January 26-29, 2012

Where:  The Kennedy Center

Metro station: Foggy Bottom and ride the free shuttle (every 10 minutes) from there to KC (or walk it)

For more information and tickets: Click here or call 202-467-4600 from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily.

patricialesliexam@gmail.com

National Symphony Orchestra tickets on sale for $11 each

Christopher Eschenbach is the National Symphony Orchestra conductor, and Michelle DeYoung is a mezzo-soprano who will sing March 8, 2012/The Kennedy Center

Stephen Hough will play Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 1 April 19 and April 20, 2012/The Kennedy Center

It's true!

According to a mailing I received from the Kennedy Center: Pick any three concerts (certain dates and times) from remaining programs for $33 total, or six concerts for $66 (better seats), or nine concerts for $99 (premium orchestra seats).

No handling charge!  And no Saturday nights, but there are some Friday nights: Jan. 20, Feb. 3, Feb. 10, Mar. 9, Mar. 23, May 18, and June 8, in addition to Thursday nights and several Friday matinees and a couple of Sunday matinees (Jan. 29 and Feb. 19).

I don't have to list all the performances, do I? Good! Get'em while they are hot.

Log on to nationalsymphony.org/tripleplay and choose the Triple Play Subscription under NSO Classical. Make your selections and check out and look for your tickets in the mail, or call 202-416-8500 to speak with a human. Three's the minimum.

Offer ends February 29, 2012, and it can be withdrawn at any time so you better get to clickin'.

While $11 is higher than what you may pay for the Wizards (30 cents), members of the National Symphony Orchestra are true team players who put out a solid performance and win every time.