SPCO lights fire under Beethoven's Fifth

A concert that ends, as does the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra's 51st season opener, with Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is making a statement, or trying to. Two centuries after it was first published, the work still epitomizes music's claim to rise above entertainment and rank among the noblest of pursuits. Its tragedy-to-triumph narrative can recall us to our better selves; it can also sound grandiose, embodying an exaggeratedly heroic conception of human possibility.

Our latter-day experience of the Fifth is inseparable from its symbolic status and frequent repetition. We listen with ears it has molded; we hear as it enjoins us to hear. A worthwhile performance resists such institutionalization, finding ways to dent the symphony's familiarity, trading predictability for at least a semblance of shock.

Abetted by a band champing at the bit after its summer break, conductor Douglas Boyd lit a fire with the Fifth, especially its latter half. The first movement, seemingly self-propelled, had a turbulent rigor that was only intensified by Kathryn Greenbank's edge-of-the-seat oboe cadenza. (Boyd himself was the oboist on the arresting live recordings of the Beethoven symphonies made in 1990-91 by period-performance pioneer Nikolaus Harnoncourt, and possesses much of the older man's grit. Boyd is also recording the symphonies live with his U.K.-based chamber orchestra, the Manchester Camerata.)

The Andante danced more than usual; the Scherzo, powered by unstoppable low strings, was charged with existential immediacy. And in Boyd's hands the finale, which sometimes feels overlong or overblown, was neither. The Scotsman concludes his tenure as an SPCO artistic partner Sept. 26; I'll be sad to see him go.

The Fifth tends to eclipse other music in its vicinity, but the first half of Friday morning's concert at the Ordway Center was scarcely less vivid than the second. Beginning with an animated account of Mozart's Overture to "The Magic Flute" (which gave the three trombonists hired for the Beethoven something more to do), it then showcased four of the orchestra's principal players in two 18th-century double concertos.

Concertmaster Steven Copes and acting principal viola Maiya Papach offered a slightly indulgent reading of Mozart's admittedly romantic Sinfonia Concertante in E-flat. Oboist Greenbank and bassoonist Charles Ullery were the well-matched soloists in a personable G-major Concerto (RV 545) by Antonio Vivaldi; in its central Largo they were beautifully accompanied by harpsichordist Layton (Skip) James, who, after four decades with the SPCO, will retire at season's end.

Larry Fuchsberg writes frequently about music.