Under the leadership of Gianandrea Noseda the National Symphony Orchestra is unanimously recognized among the very best US Orchestras

For decades, the National Symphony Orchestra has been an enigma. The Washington DC-based ensemble has had distinguished music directors (including Antal Dorati, Mstislav Rostropovich, Leonard Slatkin and Christoph Eschenbach) but has rarely performed above a level of mediocrity. That appears to have totally changed. On Saturday night, the orchestra appeared at the Arsht Center under its current chief conductor Gianandrea Noseda and displayed a standard of performance that can rank with the best of American orchestras. (Lawrence Budmen, South Florida Classical Review)

America, so the received wisdom goes, is home to five great orchestras: the New York Philharmonic, the symphony orchestras of Boston and Chicago, and the orchestras of Philadelphia and Cleveland. To this “Big Five,” one should rightly add the National Symphony Orchestra, which performs mainly at Washington’s recently newsworthy John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. In March, the NSO embarked on a five-stop tour of the Sunshine State, where the performing arts are enjoying a renaissance as Florida becomes a new nexus of national power and influence. Founded in 1931, the NSO is younger than its celebrated peer orchestras, most of which entered the world in Gilded Age exuberance. Its excellence has long been in gestation, but, helmed since 2017 by its music director Gianandrea Noseda, it is reaching new heights. (Paul du Quenoy, The New Criterion)

Thursday’s performance was, quite simply, one of the best I’ve ever seen this orchestra give: a dazzling show of force shaped by inspired restraint, and yet more evidence of the NSO’s mounting powers under Noseda. (Michael Andor Brodeur, The Washington Post)