And the winner is . . .

I arrived at the concert

• Mozart, Sympony #25
• Dvořák, Violin Concerto
• Prokofiev, Alexander Nevsky

expecting Mozart and Dvořák to duke it out for first place and expecting Prokofiev, while possibly interesting, to come in a distant third.  Knock me over with a feather! Prokofiev won in a walk.

The NSO last performed the Prokofiev work 20 years ago under Rostropovich.  The Post's critic wrote

I didn’t hear Rostropovich perform it, but some of the musicians in the orchestra played it under him, and it was possible to convince yourself that you were hearing both vestiges of his involvement with this work and, in the hands of the capable young conductor Jakub Hrusa, a slightly paler performance. 

Shorter version:

I heard Hrusa.  I didn't hear Rostropovich.  Rostropovich was better.

Sigh.

She was close to right, however, in commenting that the Dvořák concerto calls the orchestra into a partnership with the soloist rather than just an accompanying role [which your blogger, unfamiliar with the work, found off-putting at first] and that this was "a partnership that Hrusa took so much to heart that the soloist was sometimes at risk of being drowned out. "  And "the surging orchestra at times made [the soloist] sound a little small." (Actually, he sounded small throughout, not just "at times," but why quibble?) 

Anyway, . . . Nevsky is terrific.  Go hear it if you get a chance.  But don't — I repeat don't — watch it on Youtube.  Those tiny speakers in your computer can't come close to handling that enormous sound.  (Enormous?  Yep, isn't that what you'd call 100+ singers plus an equal number of musicians, including a percussion section — gong, cymbals, bass drum, snare drum, timpani, and goodness knows what all else — of at least six?)