National Symphony Takes a Cue From the Age of Slava

Anyone who comes to play Dmitri Shostakovich's Cello Concerto No. 1 in E-flat with the National Symphony Orchestra stands in the long shadow of Mstislav Rostropovich. The composer dedicated the concerto to Rostropovich, who gave its premiere in 1959. Later, when he was the NSO's music director, from 1977 to 1994, Rostropovich made a specialty of searing performances of Shostakovich's music, even performing the concerto with the orchestra. Though Slava died in April, memories of his playing are still fresh for many NSO patrons.

Fortunately, for its concert last night at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, the NSO brought in Heinrich Schiff, one of the few cellists who can stand comparison with Slava. He doesn't have quite the same big, rich tone and feeling for Russian music that Rostropovich did -- who does? -- but from the opening bars of the concerto, he showed truly impressive command of and feeling for this music.

Schiff made the brusque four-note motif that opens the concerto incisive and driving, launching a first movement filled with rich detail yet charged with momentum. (Indeed, during a duel between the cello and the horn, Schiff sped right past NSO principal horn player Martin Hackleman, who had a rough night in general.) Yet the slower melodies of the Moderato blossomed with unfussy poise in Schiff's hands, and during the long solo cadenza, he made the silences around his soft pizzicato notes as dramatic as his most fevered virtuoso flourishes.

Under guest conductor Roberto Minczuk, the NSO matched Schiff well, feeding off his rhythmic energy and complementing his playing with appealing tone colors. The concerto's finale came off especially well, as Schiff and the orchestra rode lurching tempo changes and obsessive energy to a satisfying conclusion.

Minczuk, music director of the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, led two equally colorful works to round out the program: Silvestre Revueltas's "Homenaje a Federico Garc¿a Lorca" and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's "Scheherazade." The two works played to what appears to be Minczuk's main strength: drawing appealing sonorities from an orchestra.

In the Revueltas, for example, he clarified the textures of the "Baile" ("Dance") section so that you could easily hear the horns' melodies squiggling chaotically throughout. Unfortunately, the same section featured rhythms that reminded me not of a festive dance but of the attendees at my senior prom dutifully lining up to run stiffly through the Macarena, a problem that persisted throughout the piece.

Minczuk gave great freedom to the orchestral soloists in "Scheherazade," which worked well when concertmaster Nurit Bar-Josef played the rhapsodic violin solos that frame the pictorial narratives of Rimsky-Korsakov's score. When Minczuk stopped the forward progress of the music to allow section leaders to come in late and adopt phrasing different from that of the rest of the orchestra, the narrative suffered.

Minczuk and the NSO rarely laid down a clear rhythm, and he often had trouble keeping the orchestra playing together when the tempo changed. But after rushing past most of the humid longing in "The Young Prince and the Young Princess," Minczuk and the NSO did gather themselves for an exciting finale; the big shipwreck made a satisfying crash and the winds formed a lovely glowing halo around Bar-Josef's final solo.

The program will be repeated at 8 p.m. tonight and tomorrow. Fans of the cello or Shostakovich should be there.