After last week's lavish, conductor-driven season opener (Mozart's "Don Giovanni," under the knowing baton of Roberto Abbado), the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra this week shifts to conductorless mode, offering an agreeable (if slightly faded) program in which violin concertos by Haydn and Mendelssohn, warmly delivered by soloist Gil Shaham, frame an early Beethoven symphony.
Joseph Haydn's G-Major Concerto was pleasure unalloyed. Shaham and Steven Copes, directing inconspicuously from the concertmaster's chair, found a convincing pulse in each movement. The Israeli-American violinist, lately heard with the Minnesota Orchestra on its European tour, seemed uncommonly engaged with the orchestra. The sweet intensity of Shaham's 1699 Stradivarius seemed ideal for this music; the quiet rapture of the brief second-movement cadenza was arguably the evening's highlight.
Overplayed it may be, but Felix Mendelssohn's mature Violin Concerto (1838-44) deftly melds virtuosity and lyricism, classical poise and romantic sentiment. Alas, Shaham's performance, despite fetching details and tone, never quite seemed to jell.
Thursday's account of Beethoven's brash Second Symphony (1801-02) was marked by eruptive energy and smile-inducing unanimity of attack. Would there have been greater rhythmic nuance, more poetry and atmosphere in the songful Larghetto with a capable conductor in charge? Probably. Still, this was a remarkable achievement in collaborative musicmaking, one that few other orchestras could hope to equal.
Larry Fuchsberg writes regularly about music.
