By Tim Page
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 2, 2007

By the time the National Symphony Orchestra turned five years old, way back in 1936, it had already played its first performances of the four pieces by Ludwig van Beethoven -- the "Egmont" and "Coriolan" overtures, the Violin Concerto and the Symphony No. 5 -- that it played last night at the Kennedy Center, and all of them have also graced NSO programs since 2004.

It's great music, to be sure, but compositions that have been presented so often, even the best of them, can become so familiar that they are hard to play or listen to with any sort of freshness. Yet there was nothing remotely routine about the NSO's performances last night.

Iván Fischer, who will become the orchestra's principal conductor next fall while the company looks for a permanent music director to replace the departing Leonard Slatkin, led brisk, meticulous, supercharged renditions that made these pieces seem brand-new. One had the sure sense, throughout the evening, that Fischer was demanding a great deal from the musicians, and that they were rather enjoying being worked so hard, because the results sounded so good. As the old health-club commercials used to exhort -- feel the burn.

Fischer's work reminds me of the old Arturo Toscanini Beethoven recordings. His tempos are on the fast side and one is always aware of a fiercely propulsive inner drive. Rarely have rests "sounded" so distinctly as they did in the "Egmont" Overture, almost deafening in their charged silence.

And yet Fischer's musicmaking, while undeniably taut and goal-oriented, can be surpassingly elastic when lyricism is called for. I can imagine some listeners finding last night's rendition of the Beethoven Fifth simply too explosive for their tastes -- to quote yet another old advertisement, it sounded as though it was "shot from guns" -- but I doubt that anybody would claim that it wasn't exciting.

Nikolaj Znaider was the soloist in the Violin Concerto and he made his usual fine impression. He shaped the music in the manner of a storyteller, starting off nearly inaudibly and then building and climbing before taking off into an inspired and beautifully ornamented narrative.

Znaider is so determined never to play flat that he sometimes veers close to playing sharp, but never quite gets there. He combines his near-superhuman technique with a very human sense of song. I particularly enjoyed the second movement, which carried with it just a hint of raga, as the orchestra reiterated simple chord changes and the violin soared and wailed above it.

The program will be repeated tonight and tomorrow at 8 p.m.