Kennedy Center concert

The National Symphony Orchestra was in fine form Friday night under the baton of guest conductor and internationally-acclaimed violinist Pinchas Zukerman, performing in the Concert Hall of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts here in Washington.

Opening with the Prélude to Richard Wagner's opera, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, they displayed a wonderful richness of tone and some of the finest playing I think I've heard them do in the past few years. The strings bowed in unison, the woodwinds were always together (and there are some challenging solo spotlights for the winds as an ensemble in this prelude), and the brass was right on cue and didn't have any unfortunate splatty entrances. As expected for a Wagner work, the usual orchestra was augmented; they had a huge, inspiring sound. This has always been one of my favorite classical pieces, and I love the grandiosity and nobility of the music.

Zuckerman's wife, Amanda Forsyth, appeared in the second selection as the featured cello soloist in Max Bruch's Kol nidrei, Adagio on Hebrew Melodies for Cello and Orchestra, Op. 47. There was actually very little for the orchestra to do in this piece, with the vast majority being solo cello. Forsyth plays a 1699 vintage Carlo Giuseppe Testore instrument that was wonderfully expressive in the upper registers and lush in the middle range, but a little raspy, I thought, in the lowest ranges. The Bruch only lasted about ten minutes, and I would have liked to have had more time to hear Forsyth's playing.

Equally entertaining as listening to the music was observing what the 38-year-old blonde South African was wearing. She emerged carrying her cello clad in a tightly form-fitting long fire engine red dress with a high neckline, tight long sleeves, gathered fabric crossed in front at the waist, and a fish tail flair at the bottom. She accessorized with metallic silver shoes with four-inch spike heels and lots of diamond jewelry. She had great big stones for her drop earrings that really caught the light. She was also wearing quite a large wedding ring on her right hand (string players wear their rings on that hand to avoid damaging their instruments) and had a diamond tennis bracelet on that arm. She also wore a thin silver headband across the top of her head that had something on it that caught the light now and then, but it didn't look like it would have been a row of diamonds, so I don't know what that was.

The third work in the first half of the concert was Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 5 in A Major, K. 219, with Zuckerman as both conductor and featured soloist. The concerto is a fairly short work with only three movements. He performed admirably, particularly on the cadenzas at the end of each movement. What particularly displayed his renowned artistry, though, were those pianissimo passages he played, spellbinding the audience.

In fairness, I should comment upon his attire as well. He wore a black tail coat with black trousers. Instead of wearing a white bow tie and a white piqué waistcoat, however, he chose to wear a wide black cummerbund and he had this rather unusual white shirt designed to be worn without a tie that had rather stylized collar points and what almost looked like a fold-over lapel. And, since I last saw him in 2000 (his daughter and I sang the world premiere of an opera by Jean-Michel Damase), his hair has gone fully silver.

After the interval, the orchestra played Beethoven's Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 36. Twas four movements, but only lasted about half an hour.

It was quite an enjoyable evening, and the NSO played excellently. This was a perfect example of what I've said for years, and that's that the NSO doesn't play well for their music director, Leonard Slatkin, and they only do well with respected guest conductors like Zuckerman. I kept looking for something to mention that was off key or not together or something all night long, and about the only thing I could note was that during a rather raucous section of the Beethoven, some of the bass players were slapping their strings a little bit with their bows and I could hear the slap.