Beethoven, Mahler and Varese at the National Orchestral Institute Festival

It was as if two different James Rosses manned the podium Saturday for the first full-orchestra concert of this year's National Orchestral Institute Festival at the University of Maryland's Clarice Smith Center. First was the before-intermission Ross, who way over-conducted a reading of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, and then came the after-intermission Ross, whose concise and economical clarity brought coherence to two sprawling works, the Adagio from Mahler's 10th Symphony and Edgard Varese's "Am...