Away from the Kennedy Center, critics say the NSO sounds better

A month into the National Symphony Orchestra's first season away from the Kennedy Center, the early critical verdict has had less to do with the fight that put the ensemble on the road than with what it sounds like in its new rooms.

Reviewing the season's second subscription program on Oct. 8 at the Rachel M. Schlesinger Concert Hall in Alexandria, Va., Washington Classical Review critic Charles T. Downey wrote that after three weeks of hearing the orchestra in different halls, the overwhelming impression was that two years outside the Kennedy Center Concert Hall would be a net gain for it. The orchestra's sound reaches a listener more easily in the new venues, he wrote, and the players appear to be hearing one another in new ways.

The NSO opened its 96th season on Sept. 26 at the Music Center at Strathmore in North Bethesda, Md., with Music Director Gianandrea Noseda conducting a suite from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, composer-in-residence Carlos Simon's Monuments: A Suite for D.C. and Respighi's La boutique fantasque.

In its review of opening night, Washington Classical Review reported that the musicians drew a standing ovation before playing a note, that the evening was billed as a celebration rather than a gala, that the donor dinner before it was scaled down and that no fundraising total was announced. Reviewing the same concert in The New York Times on Sept. 29, Oussama Zahr reported that Noseda has begun describing the ensemble as a touring orchestra.

The orchestra announced the season on Aug. 18, about five and a half weeks before opening night; American orchestras of comparable size generally announce in late winter. The NSO said it would give roughly 60 performances between September and June at six venues — two each in the District, Maryland and Virginia — and would tour five states in April 2027. In the announcement, Noseda said he and the musicians were eager to bring their work to audiences in the region "as well as around America during our first multi-state U.S. tour."

The six halls are Lisner Auditorium and the Lincoln Theatre in Washington; Strathmore and the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center in Maryland; and Schlesinger Hall and the Center for the Arts at George Mason University in Virginia.

Noseda's opening stand covered Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade, Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition and Ravel's Boléro on Oct. 1 at George Mason and Oct. 2 at Strathmore, then Stravinsky's Scènes de ballet, Haydn's Symphony No. 85 and Prokofiev's Symphony No. 5 on Oct. 8 and 9 in Alexandria and Oct. 10 at Strathmore. Downey noted that Schlesinger Hall is smaller than Strathmore and that the audience there was sparser than in the two preceding weeks.

Leonard Slatkin, the orchestra's fifth music director, who led it from 1996 to 2008, returned on Oct. 22 and 23 at Schlesinger Hall and Saturday at Strathmore for a program of his own Schubertiade, Joan Tower's Love Returns — an NSO co-commission written for saxophonist Steven Banks — and Rachmaninoff's Symphony No. 3. Washington Classical Review called the Rachmaninoff an excellent reading and reported that Tower, 88, spoke about the new piece from the stage and returned to play an encore with Banks.

The orchestra's first concerts inside the District this season come Nov. 12 and 14 at Lisner, where Teddy Abrams conducts the world premiere of Sarah Kirkland Snider's Urge, an NSO co-commission for bass-baritone Will Liverman set to a text by former U.S. poet laureate Tracy K. Smith, alongside Stravinsky, Michael Tilson Thomas and Tchaikovsky. Marie Jacquot leads Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev ballet suites Nov. 20 to 22, and Richard Egarr conducts Handel's Messiah at three venues Dec. 16 to 20.

The orchestra is also campaigning for its own-label recording of Barber's Vanessa, released May 29 and drawn from live concerts conducted by Noseda, with Nicole Heaston, J'Nai Bridges, Matthew Polenzani, Susan Graham and Thomas Hampson. Nominations for the 2027 Grammy Awards, including Best Opera Recording, are to be announced Nov. 16.

The NSO is on the road because the Kennedy Center, its home since 1971, is shut. Its board, whose members President Donald Trump replaced with allies in February 2025, voted on Aug. 13 to close the main building for a two-year, $285 million renovation, and voted again on Sept. 15 to close it immediately, citing an outside assessment that found the building unsafe to occupy. A section of ceiling had fallen in the Grand Foyer on Sept. 4. Hours before the September vote, a federal judge blocked a further attempt to add Trump's name to the building. Litigation over the closure and the name continues.

The Washington Post reported in June that the Kennedy Center board had not approved the NSO's budget for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, leaving the orchestra unable to book halls or sign guest artists; that ticket sales last season were projected to cover about half of what the orchestra had budgeted; and that its usual annual budget runs to about $40 million. Brian Boyle became chair of the NSO board on June 3, succeeding Joan Bialek.

In an open letter published June 2, before the season was announced, Ben Folds, who was artistic advisor to the NSO at the Kennedy Center until he resigned in February 2025, wrote that the orchestra was in real trouble and "may not survive," pointing to the missing season announcement and to what he described as the entanglement of the NSO's endowment in the Kennedy Center's finances. The NSO board, in a statement after its June 3 meeting, said it was preparing an exciting season and praised the musicians' work through a difficult year.

Noseda's contract runs through the orchestra's 100th season. Asked by WETA Classical's Nicole Lacroix about programming new work, he said the orchestra's responsibility is to present it as well as it can and to let history decide what lasts.