Review: National Symphony Orchestra, Washington, with Juanjo Mena and Garrick Ohlsson

“On all counts: an emotionally challenging, yet emotionally satisfying, thought-provoking, absolutely exhilarating program.”

“Making his debut with The National Symphony Orchestra, Spanish-born Conductor Juanjo Mena, elegant in tails and passionately eloquent in gesture and carriage, was in full command, not of the orchestra, but in full partnership with the orchestra. And not only here, but in the two thoroughly divergent, yet somehow essentially – musically, creatively or emotionally – complementary selections that would complete the program: Samuel Barber’s Piano Concerto, Op. 38, and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Op. 74, the “Pathétique.”

You can read the full review by Leslie Weisman here.