The Washington Post
By Anne Midgette
Powerful, dramatic and familiar, Verdi’s Requiem is supposed to be a specialty of the National Symphony Orchestra’s new music director, Gianandrea Noseda. It’s one of his signature pieces, in fact: a calling card he’s left at his various international way stations in the course of his career. But the piece is so well known, and so often done — especially in Washington, this chorus-filled city — that I confess I harbored a certain skepticism. At least, I did until Thursday night, when he conducted the Requiem with the NSO at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, and completely won me over.
The wonderful thing about this Requiem was that it was entirely unexpected, without being obviously showy. When you think of an Italianate Verdi Requiem — this piece that began as a tribute to the Italian patriot Alessandro Manzoni, too theatrical for any church — you might expect a certain kind of heart-on-the-sleeve, thundering drama. Noseda delivered drama aplenty, but it was organic rather than melodramatic. His line was fluid and supple, his touch light, so that even the thwacks of the bass drum in the “Dies Irae” were forwardly propulsive and part of a bigger picture.
Noseda is also a born opera conductor, as he showed anew Thursday with his careful attention to the singers, the words, and their meaning. The joint forces of the Washington Chorus, in its first months with its own new music director, Christopher Bell, and the Choral Arts Society of Washington sounded warm and glowing and responsive, from the resilient whispers of the “Kyrie” to the full-throated near-shouts of the “Dies Irae.”