Among the five artistic partners who collaborate with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra a few times each season, Richard Egarr is the fun one.

That's to take nothing away from the thoroughly enjoyable performances led by South African cellist and composer Abel Selaocoe (who will be here in October), but his performances seem more spiritual excursions, while Egarr always feels focused upon delight as a key ingredient in the classical concert experience.

So who better to launch the SPCO's 2023-2024 season than this English master of music from the 16th through 18th centuries? Friday's opening night at St. Paul's Ordway Concert Hall indeed featured some imaginative programming and expertly executed interpretations of works rooted in that era. The evening's highlight was a 20th-century piece by Egarr's countryman, Michael Tippett, inspired by a baroque work.

Even better, that piece was bookended by a beautiful Egarr arrangement of Renaissance fare from one Venetian (Andrea Gabrieli) and a lovely, lively take on a concerto for multiple soloists by another (Antonio Vivaldi), each impeccably performed.

Yet I came away from the concert feeling as if — after all that fine music that played to Egarr's expertise — he and the SPCO musicians who curated the program closed it with music that wasn't a good fit for their partnership. Their overly loud and bombastic interpretation of Beethoven's Second Symphony was disappointing.

Instead of exploring the intricacies and intimacy that a chamber orchestra can bring to Beethoven symphonies that a larger orchestra can't, Egarr repeatedly encouraged explosive fortissimos that seemed designed to awaken a slumbering audience, which shouldn't be an issue with the SPCO's new 7 p.m. start times.

But by all means get to these concerts on time — warning: on-street parking's at a premium around the Ordway, with just about every avenue partially or totally closed by construction — for Egarr's antiphonal instrumental arrangement of a three-choir "Magnificat" by Renaissance composer Gabrieli proved a rousing curtain raiser, with brass in the balcony and involving interchanges throughout.

Most thrilling was Tippett's "Fantasia concertante on a Theme of Corelli for Strings." What begins in the baroque period gradually modernizes, dissonances edging in and overlapping phrases increasingly finding less agreement in their harmonies and rhythms. Full of subtly shifting dynamics, its intensity peaked with a frenzy of high violin tones swept away by an undertow of bold basses, but one powerful moment in a work that surges like a restless sea, repeatedly receding and then flowing forth again.

For sheer fun, the concert's peak was Vivaldi's Concerto for Violin, Two Oboes, Bassoon, Two Horns and Orchestra, a more full-bodied branch of that composer's repertoire, written for a relatively large German orchestra. Leading from the harpsichord, Egarr called for ebullient vigor and got it on the percussive opening movement and the fiery galloping finale. Between them was a beautiful aria for oboe from Cassie Pilgrim, who delivered several excellent solos, as did violinist Steven Copes, complemented by the resonant French horns of James Ferree and Matthew Wilson.

St. Paul Chamber Orchestra

With: Conductor and harpsichordist Richard Egarr

What: Works by Andrea Gabrieli, Michael Tippett, Antonio Vivaldi and Beethoven

When: 7 p.m. Sat., 2 p.m. Sun.

Where: Ordway Concert Hall, 345 Washington St., St. Paul

Tickets: Free-$55, 651-291-1144 or thespco.org

Rob Hubbard is a Twin Cities classical music writer. Reach him at wordhub@yahoo.com.