The Eleven Thousand

The National Symphony Orchestra has just finished their 11,000th performance. We were pleased to be a part of the audience to see "Composer Portrait: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart" at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

This is the first time Svet and I have been able to get together and do something for weeks, so we went to the concert and then to dinner afterwards. It was a special night.....he was actually on time! And, two minutes early! Once we arrived at the Kennedy Center lobby, we headed for one of the bars and while we were standing in line for me to get my honey daiquiri (Mame—with Christine Baranski—is playing in the Eisenhower Theater this month) and Svet his champagne, Fr. Steven walked up and he took and drank Svet's champagne. We were all sitting in the same row in the Concert Hall. We had decent seats this time—center orchestra, about 60% of the way back.

Now, the first thing I want to do, boys and girls, is talk about proper dress at concerts. The Concert Hall at the Kennedy Center is not the outdoor amphitheater at Wolftrap. The Concert Hall is not an open air concert on the lawn. One should not dress as though one were attending a neighborhood barbeque. One should not wear jeans and an untucked polo (need I say anything about t-shirts?). One should not wear flip-flops. One should not wear tops that expose ones lingerie or naval. Now, it's summer, so one needn't wear a dark suit and tie or a dress; I don't mind if one attends dressed up as though one were attending an afternoon garden party, the key thing being "dressed up." Something a little better than business casual is appropriate. Remember, guys, gentlemen do not appear in public in their shirt sleeves, and, ladies, please look like one!

Speaking of clothes, remember how I've often complained about the way NSO Music Director Leonard Slatkin has dressed at concerts in the past? Well, tonight, he was finally dressed appropriately! The orchestra men were in white dinner jackets and black bow ties, and Slatkin wore a cream dinner jacket, black bow tie, and small red handkerchief in his pocket. Why does this matter? Well, in the past few years of attending bunches of NSO concerts conducted by Slatkin, this concert was absolutely the best concert I've heard him conduct. The orchestra sounded good and they stayed together so much better than they have for Slatkin in the past. So, all I can say is, "Vestis virum reddit."

Every year, NSO does a Composer Portrait concert, and this year it was Mozart, in honor of his 250th birthday. Tonight's program was rather unexpected. The entire first half was a biography of Mozart narrated by NPR star Martin Goldsmith. Instead of playing some of Mozart's more famous shorter pieces or best known works, they played little snippets of the major themes from about two dozen different compositions to illustrate the biography. Simultaneously, slides were shown on a large screen over the stage.

While the orchestra itself sounded fine during these little snippets, what particularly impressed me were the string quartets and quintets that were played by the principal chairs in the orchestra; they were perfectly together, even though they were spread out all over the stage.

Some of the works chosen had vocal music with solos and duets sung by Jennifer Casey Cabot, soprano, and Benjamin Butterfield, tenor; both of them were serviceable.

After the intermission (during which we stood out on the terrace watching the boats go up and down the river), we returned to hear the Symphony No. 41 in C major, K. 551 ("Jupiter"), Mozart's last and, in the opinion of many commentators, his finest symphony. Prior to playing the work, though, Maestro Slatkin took about fifteen to twenty minutes to talk about the musicology of the symphony and had the orchestra play little passages to illustrate what he was discussing. After they played the symphony, the audience seemed quite appreciative for the evening's entertainment, and compelled Slatkin to come out reluctantly for a second curtain call.