On a blustery evening in October, Daniel Foster sat onstage at the Kennedy Center, viola in his lap. The National Symphony Orchestra was about to play “Don Juan,” an 1889 tone poem by Richard Strauss about a young libertine in search of the ideal woman. The opening is fiendishly tricky for viola. It has a fast and technical harmonic line that’s musically demanding and strange. Thirty years ago, in his audition to be the NSO’s principal violist, Foster played that excerpt. He won the job.
Foster loves playing Strauss. He loves the “liquid clarinet and the heroic French horn,” the way Strauss “pushes us into the whole range of the instrument,” asking for “the full gamut of moods and types of sound.” It’s fun, he says, to play music so demanding and sublime. Audiences love it, too. In his 30 years with the orchestra, Foster has performed “Don Juan” at various points, and always, the house was nearly full. But lately, crowds at the Kennedy Center have thinned. From the edge of the stage that night, he peered out past the grand, honeycombed chandelier, across the hall’s lush red upholstery, at deserted balconies and clusters of empty seats.
In February, just weeks after his inauguration, Donald Trump pledged to “make the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., GREAT AGAIN.” Citing drag shows and “anti-American propaganda,” he fired 18 Biden-appointed members of the board and made himself its chairman, vowing to rid the institution’s programming of anything woke. The fallout was intense. Performers canceled, employees resigned. Then the boycotts began. The Kennedy Center—home to the National Symphony Orchestra and Washington National Opera, host to an array of high-wattage touring acts—typically operates near capacity. By fall, attendance was down almost 40 percent…