Gianandrea Noseda conducts Shostakovich's Violin Concerto No. 2 (with Leonidas Kavakos) and Stravinsky's Petrushka

Dmitri Shostakovich composed his final concerto for the great David Oistrakh, and its profound expressiveness and intricate double-stop passages call for a violinist of Oistrakh's superhuman ability — one like Greek virtuoso Leonidas Kavakos, who performs the Violin Concerto No. 2 here with maestro Gianandrea Noseda and the National Symphony Orchestra! Kavakos is "a wonder" whose Shostakovich has been known to make members of the world's top orchestras spontaneously applaud, an artist of otherworldly precision from whom the music flows "like a river — big, glistening and unobstructed, but also tasteful in its frictionless subtleties" (New York Times). Noseda and the NSO round out the program with another 20th-century Russian masterpiece: Stravinsky's bold, vibrant music for the ballet Petrushka, one of the crowning achievements of the legendary Ballets Russes.