A Final 'Fanfare' For the NSO's Leonard Slatkin

He left us without a word. Leonard Slatkin, known for his ability to talk to an audience, remained speechless last night in his final subscription program with the National Symphony Orchestra. He stood straighter than usual as he walked in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, as if a weight already had been lifted from his often stooped shoulders. When he took the podium, before a note had been played, he was greeted with a standing ovation.

The program was an odd scrapbook, a collection of souvenirs rather than a strong statement in itself. Beethoven's "Leonore" Overture No. 3 was on the program in the National Symphony's first-ever season. Shostakovich's Second Cello Concerto was -- like his First Cello Concerto -- written for the NSO's previous music director, Mstislav Rostropovich. And Copland's Third Symphony is a Slatkin calling card that he has played more than 20 times with the NSO, most recently in 2005.

The evening also showed off what Slatkin has turned the orchestra into: an energetic body, by all accounts vastly improved, with some strong principals as well as some unruly ones. They sound ready to take on a lot. They also tend, on Thursday nights, to sound as if they need just one more rehearsal. The Beethoven "Leonore" was lusty, with moments of a healthy Copland-like energy, but it was initially unbalanced, with the second theme submerged in the torrent of the supporting voices.

If one looked at the program's narrative line, one could perhaps fancifully say it also traced the arc of Slatkin's up-and-down NSO tenure. The "Leonore" Overture offered compact drama, tragedy relieved by the offstage horns of deliverance. The Shostakovich was all about inward tension, moving the cello from throaty depths to a keening theme of mourning. Then all shadows were wiped away in all-American, triumphant strains of the Copland. It was music to accompany Slatkin's return to the heartland; he will take over in the fall as music director of the Detroit Symphony.

Fostering young artists is another Slatkin hallmark; it was represented here by the 27-year-old cellist Sol Gabetta, making her American concerto debut. Gabetta is hardly undiscovered, however; a recording artist with Sony Classical, she is a big talent who appeared here to be working on finding a way to make statements to match. This concerto is a tricky assignment: The less popular, and longer, of the composer's two concertos, it requires almost constant participation from its soloist and keeps its emotional flame turned high throughout. Gabetta dug into the piece with a will, her tone warm and full on the lower strings but a little thin when she tried to force her points on the upper ones. It took a split second for her notes to speak and bloom, and her rapid passagework was so introspective that it did not always rise above the orchestra. Still, her playing is impressive: clean and agile, waiting to gain the weight of even greater maturity.

You could draw parallels between Shostakovich and Copland (the program notes tried), but after the resigned agony of the Shostakovich concerto -- which ends with the soloist dying away to nothing, briefly reawakened by the life support of a rattle of percussion to one last gasp of utterance -- Copland emerged as the picture of rude good health. In this context Copland's association with an illusion of red-white-and-blue America was perfectly explicable, though his brand of Americana is better understood when it is equated not with the imagery of waving wheat and sunbonnets but with the Empire State Building. This piece is progressive music written at a time when the peculiarly American vision of Progress limned it as something big and clean and exciting.

And there is a reason Slatkin plays this piece so often: It fits him like a glove. This is his home turf: music that is American, uplifting, not overly familiar but easily appealing, culminating in "Fanfare for the Common Man." Slatkin has done much in his career to champion the American symphonists of the mid-20th century, and he certainly brought this one to life. Repetition, too, really does help: The piece, performed so recently, was solidly in the players' lips and fingers, and everyone appeared to be having fun. Copland's signature quirks emerged, one by one: the lissome orchestration of the winds in a mellifluous segment of the third movement; the dancing, "Turkey in the Straw"-style rhythms of the exuberant second.

And this symphony has a very happy ending, from the "Fanfare" to a building, towering, exuberant climax. Slatkin sounded 20 years younger. Perhaps this departure is waking him to new beginnings. He certainly left, without a word or a whimper, but very much with a bang, of Copland's final chord, and the audience's applause.

The program repeats tonight and tomorrow at 8 p.m.