Carter led an over-capacity audience at Wolf Trap on Staurday night in cheering the National Symphony Orchestra, conductor Mstislav Rostropovich and pianist Andre Watts. Other highlights of the season include performances at the Seattle Town Hall, Eastman. In their opening subscription weekend celebrating the Orchestra Hall Centennial and received an invitation to replace Andre Watts with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra performing Ravel’s Left-Hand Concerto.

With all this excellence, it is also true that the concerto often arrived in episodes rather than in large, unbroken concepts.Watts and Rostropovich were not always perfectly synchronized in the subtle ritards and the grand expansive moments that fill the concerto. It stimulates him to superb, almost limitless flights of technical virtuosity, guides his tone in lyrical passages that melt all obstacles of keys, strings, and hammers and makes long phrases filled with glorious song.The orchestra's tone was supple and beautiful throughout the concerto, with Loren Kitt's clarinet adding special beauty in the second movement. Watts played with his unique fire. The special ending written by a colleague of Mozart's to make the piece usable in concerts, features wonderfully festive trumpet florishes.With Watts in tremendous form and Rostropovich backing him with the fullest orchestral power, the concerto reached special peaks of excitement. 124: II.The overture, with its dramatic scoring and projections of the tragedy and animation that follow in the opera, was played with appropriate strength and vitality.

Andre Watts Beethoven 7Th Symphony