If you were to reduce the pantheon of classical composers to a handful, one would stand out for how little his work is performed today: Richard Wagner. But you could argue that the German romantic brought it on himself by writing operas of four to six hours in length that he insisted were best experienced one after the other over the course of a week. So he left behind something of an unsustainable oeuvre.

That makes this week's Minnesota Orchestra concerts something of a rarity. On the program is a collection of songs Wagner wrote in the 1850s, taking for their text the poetry of a benefactor, Mathilde Wesendonck. What's more, singing them is a renowned Wagner soprano, America's Emily Magee, who will don horns for "Die Walküre" and burn down the house in "Götterdämmerung" at Wagner's beloved Bayreuth Festival this summer.

On Friday night at Minneapolis' Orchestra Hall, Magee demonstrated why her way with Wagner is so celebrated, for she executed the "Wesendonck Lieder" with a fine combination of power and tenderness. As for Wagner's glorious way with an orchestra, well, these songs were mostly orchestrated by an acolyte, Felix Mottl, but the composer's style shines through.

It was the pleasing peak of a program that stretched from the chill of the arctic to the sunshine of Spain and largely cast a becoming light on the talents of the Minnesota Orchestra's musicians. But it concluded with a rather disappointing take on the concert's most popular work, Claude Debussy's "La Mer," its sense of the sea drowned in a blaring, unbalanced interpretation that missed the magic of this masterpiece.

Still, I want to cut some slack to conductor Carlos Miguel Prieto. He stepped in for the ailing David Afkham with but a few days' notice, and "La Mer" confronts a conductor with a boatload of interpretive decisions. While there were some excellently executed solos, others were buried beneath an overloud orchestra that never found its flow.

So, rather than a concert that gained momentum, this one was more satisfying in the early going. Finnish composer Outi Tarkiainen's 2020 work "The Ring of Fire and Love" proved an intriguingly atmospheric piece, with dark menacing murmurs transcended by some Miles Davis-esque muted trumpet from Manny Laureano.

A meditative mood held sway through much of the Wagner song cycle, with Magee at her most impressive when the music was at its quietest and most bittersweet, as on the lovely "Stehe still (Be still)" and the sparse, elegiac "Im Treibhaus (In the Greenhouse)." And the orchestra avidly seized this rare opportunity to speak the distinctive harmonic language of Wagner.

A slot on the program originally saved for composer Lili Boulanger was instead given over to a contemporary in early 20th-century Paris, Joaquín Turina. His "Danzas fantásticas" found Prieto at his most comfortable on the podium, even mugging a bit for the audience. It's a fine showcase for a large orchestra that seemed as if it would be an ideal big brassy contrast between the more nuanced works by Wagner and Debussy on either side of it. Alas, "La Mer" turned out to be the loudest piece of the night.

Minnesota Orchestra
With: Conductor Carlos Miguel Prieto and soprano Emily Magee
What: Works by Outi Tarkiainen, Richard Wagner, Joaquín Turina and Claude Debussy
When: 8 p.m. Sat.
Where: Orchestra Hall, 1111 Nicollet Mall, Mpls.
Tickets: $22-$82, available at 612-371-5656 or minnesotaorchestra.org

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