Noseda and the NSO , with the Choral Arts Society in tow, churn out a populist classic…

The National Symphony Orchestra is striding like never before, it seems. The honeymoon period with its new music director Gianandrea Noseda has spilled over to his second season, as Friday’s subscription concert at the Kennedy Center appeared virtually sold-out. To be sure, performances of Carl Orff’s populist 1936 barn-burner Carmina Burana are the closest thing to a box-office guarantee there is in this business. A secular cantata for soloists, chorus, and orchestra, it mainlines the most basic human needs of pounding rhythm, singable melody, and clear structure, enhanced by drinking songs and open eroticism. Rare is the concert season that goes by without it turning up somewhere in town, and it is often the only “classical” title in a large CD collection.  

Having said that, it is also somewhat beneath the NSO, which Noseda is striving to upgrade. While Carmina is a challenge to the most accomplished chorus, the large, percussion-heavy orchestra mostly serves as little more than a splashy rhythm section, and other than in a few exposed spots in the winds, one is usually hard-pressed to discern any difference in quality between a college or amateur group and a professional one in this piece. So this was a curious choice, particularly for a prominent orchestra that, under its glamorous conductor, doesn’t need to fall back on surefire, predictable programming to fill seats.    

Noseda’s hellbent-for-leather approach was manifest from the outset and grew a little tiring as the evening wore on. The wheel of fortune, depicted in the iconic opening chorus, was more like a carnival ride than a symbol of implacable fate.  He took it so fast that he had no room left for what should be an explosive burst of speed on the final syllable of the last word. All of his tempi were bracing, which was an asset in the often-sleepy Round Dance and some of the other numbers, but which taxed both pitch and diction of the otherwise-solid Choral Arts Society in In taberna quando sumus and Si puer cum puellula. In the strophic numbers, he altered the dynamics slightly from one verse to the next, but everything was about momentum, momentum, momentum. More varied approaches work as well or better.

The three soloists were a mixed bag, soprano Amy Owens being the most pleasing. She managed to get Noseda to calm down a little for In truitina, which she took at full, expressive leisure, and her high D in Dulcissime was sensual and free. The tenor part of Carmina is one of the great gigs in the business; six bars of music sung three times and you’re done (collecting the same wage as the other two). To be sure, the strangled high notes of the Roasting Swan can endanger all but the most well-trained voices, and many tenors won’t even attempt the part (you will search in vain for recordings with Pavarotti, Vickers, Domingo, or Alagna). Santiago Ballerini not only had the tessitura, he seemed to enjoy it; perhaps too much, as his swan seemed almost unconcerned with his fate. Sadly, the biggest role here was miscast. Baritone Elliot Madore, spit out clear Latin and declaimed with woozy abandon in Estuans interus and Ego sum abbas, but his voice was placed too high. He managed Dies, nox et omnia almost entirely in chest voice, which was impressive, I guess, but the weight and heft called for in the other numbers was lost.

The concert opened with blue cathedral by Jennifer Higdon, which in 20 years has become close to a modern American classic (though this is the NSO’s first time with it). From its empyreal opening of gentle chimes, through a yearning dialog between flute and clarinet, building to a middle section of chattering brass, the gentle dissonances and feeling of uplift evoke the best of Barber and Copland, filtered through a fresh, questing voice. Francis Poulenc’s Litanies á la Vierge Noire, for women’s chorus, strings, and timpani was an austere trifle, musically unmemorable, setting a lengthy group of Catholic prayers. In both works, Noseda projected his trademark intensity and control.

Photo of Gianandrea Noseda by Scott Suchman/NSO.