Review: Richard Egarr leads SPCO in festive, joyous concert

“Nothing miserable about it” may not sound like the most ringing endorsement for a concert program, but St. Paul Chamber Orchestra artistic partner Richard Egarr meant it all in fun when he introduced Friday’s midday concert that way. Indeed, if you’ve been trying to bring more joy into your life, this weekend’s program might be the ideal elixir.

Start with the fact that all three composers have a place at the small table of history’s greatest musical geniuses, each born in Germany. We have George Frideric Handel and J.S. Bach taking orchestration in exciting new directions in the early 1700s before we leap forward to early the next century for a Beethoven symphony.

At an almost-full Ordway Concert Hall, the ebullient Englishman Egarr led the orchestra in a performance that sustained a festive feeling throughout, a fine choice for the waning days of an emotionally wearying winter in the Twin Cities. And there was little to dissuade me from my opinion that the best baroque music you’ll find in these parts happens when Egarr and the SPCO get together.

Even if Beethoven’s Fourth was a little too fast and loud, it maintained the bright, buoyant spirit of the music that preceded it. So count the concert as a success the way you would an exhilarating party, accent on the fun.

And that’s appropriate, for party music launched the program. Handel wrote his “Water Music” for a royal boating excursion on the River Thames in London, with the orchestra crowded onto a barge. He sought sounds that would carry, of course, so it’s a piece with not only full-voiced strings and timpani, but some of the most exuberant French horn fanfares in the classical repertoire, trumpets trading phrases with them periodically. And the horns of Matthew Wilson and Mike Alexander burst forth wonderfully on this Egarr-curated collection of movements from the original score.

Like Handel, Bach built the music on this program upon such French dances as minuets, gavottes and bourrées, but eschewed stiff courtliness in favor of a rambunctious spirit. The SPCO is presenting all four of Bach’s Orchestral Suites over the course of this season, and No. 4 was the peak of this program. Beautiful, bright and buoyant, it was full of crisp and lively exchanges, as well as a splendid bassoon solo by Andrew Brady that weaved and wound around like one of those luge tracks at the Winter Olympics.

And there was much to recommend the version of Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony that made up the concert’s second half. It was an aggressive interpretation, emphasizing robust attacks and explosive fortissimos. But I felt that Egarr didn’t allow the menacing slow opening the room it needed to breathe and build tension. The tempo was swift throughout the symphony, and the volume too uniformly loud, which is a shame when you consider that a small orchestra like the SPCO is capable of bringing forth subtle inner voices when the music is at its quietest.

Rob Hubbard can be reached at wordhub@yahoo.com.

With: Conductor and harpsichordist Richard Egarr

What: Works by George Frideric Handel, J.S. Bach and Beethoven

When and where: 7 p.m. Sat., Ordway Concert Hall, 345 Washington St., St. Paul; 2 p.m. Sun., Ted Mann Concert Hall, 2128 4th St. S., Mpls.