National Symphony Orchestra Music Director Gianandrea Noseda rehearses with a small contingent of NSO members on March 5 at the Kennedy Center for virtual performances this spring. Photo by Evelyn Hockstein
“Maestro Noseda is back in the building. You can tell because everyone is smiling under their masks,” writes Michael Andor Brodeur in Thursday’s (3/11) Washington Post. “In early February 2020, the … coronavirus forced the cancellation of the National Symphony Orchestra’s long-planned March tour of China and Japan … under Music Director Gianandrea Noseda…. By March 12, the Kennedy Center … had cleared its calendars and closed its doors. Now … Noseda is in Washington for three weeks, leading the NSO in four programs to be filmed and digitally released through the Kennedy Center’s Digital Stage Plus platform…. Principal second violin Marissa Regni … got her coronavirus test in the Kennedy Center parking garage. ‘I was getting ready to leave, and [Noseda] was arriving for his test,’ she says…. ‘It was just like, “Oh my gosh … this is actually really going to happen.” ‘ … Noseda spent a good part of the winter downtime … teaching himself works to pocket for whenever the lockdowns lifted… No matter which piece Noseda was immersed in, in his head he could hear only the sound of the NSO. ‘That is the reverberation I have in my ears,’ he told me.”
