June 6, 2006
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I would walk barefoot on hot coals over a Himalayan peak while being pelted with wet asteroids to hear the NSO's concertmaster, Nurit Bar-Josef, play chamber music. 

I mean it!  I would!

Sunday's concert at the Terrace Theater took a while to catch fire, but by the end there was no place on the planet you'd rather be.  Here's my two cents:

The Washington Post:  It’s probably not fair to hold year-long celebrations of any composer, no matter how great.  Poor Mozart – he’s been on so many programs this year that concertgoers are starting to cringe at the sight of his name, muttering: “Oh -- you again.”

But in their last concert of the season on Sunday, the Kennedy Center Chamber Players put any Mozart-fatigue to rest with the Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, K. 478.  It’s an astoundingly beautiful and complex work, and pianist Lambert Orkis, with Marissa Regni on violin, Daniel Foster on viola and David Hardy manning the cello, gave it an engaging, well-crafted reading. The work’s stormy emotions felt a bit pallid, as if unwilling to give offense, but it was a treat to hear nonetheless.

Clarinetist Loren Kitt gave a similarly thoughtful reading to Paul Hindemith’s Clarinet Sonata in B-flat major.  It’s a warm but dry work, full of wistfulness and restrained ardor, and Kitt played it with immaculate taste; an agreeable Sunday afternoon performance.

The quiet, however, was about to explode. Richard Strauss’ youthful Piano Quartet in C minor, Op. 13 was next on the program, and Nurit Bar-Josef – the National Symphony Orchestra’s formidable concertmaster – took the stage, decked out gypsy-like in fringes and sashes and glittering whatnots as far as the eye could see. And from the moment she put bow to strings the entire Terrace Theater came alive.  Bar-Josef plays with white-hot ferocity, and she unleashed this  exuberant work – written when Strauss was not yet twenty – like a thunderbolt.  And what more could you wish for on a pleasant Sunday afternoon in June?