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On Thursday night at the Kennedy Center, a rising star and a superstar lit up the Concert Hall.

The rising star was 23-year-old Finnish phenomenon Tarmo Peltokoski, music director of the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra, making his conducting debut with the National Symphony Orchestra (on a program that repeats Saturday and Sunday).

The superstar was the celebrated 36-year-old Chinese pianist Yuja Wang, there to perform Bartók’s thriller second piano concerto with spellbinding ease.

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The concerto was the centerpiece of a program that opened with Wagner’s 1862 prelude to “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg” and closed with the first symphony by Jean Sibelius, Peltokoski’s fellow Finn. And while Wang brought the star power — and her bright fuchsia gown brought the gasps — there was big-night energy in the hall all evening.

Peltokoski strode to the podium with an efficiency that might have suggested jitters, but from the opening burst of the prelude to its crashing, ringing finish, he navigated its crisscrossing rush of emotional currents with visible pleasure. Arching back, he basked in Wagner’s big pushes of brass; leaning in, he guided the pining strings of the prelude with the fluid ease of a good swim.

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