Review: Richard Egarr and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra offer a spirited performance of Haydn

Joseph Haydn and Richard Egarr have a lot in common. Music of the 18th century is a specialty of both (well, OK, that’s when Haydn lived). Each has found some of his greatest successes in England. And both love a good joke and sprinkling music with surprises.

So it makes sense that the two should have such an enjoyable rendezvous at this weekend’s St. Paul Chamber Orchestra concerts. Among the SPCO’s team of artistic partners, Egarr is the one most committed to finding the fun in the music, although he can summon solemnity just as skillfully. Although he arrived in the Twin Cities with a reputation as a master interpreter of baroque music — as both conductor and keyboardist — he’s been venturing into later eras with great success.

A prime example was Friday night’s performance of Haydn’s penultimate symphony, his 103rd, nicknamed the “Drum Roll.” Egarr and the SPCO made it the most energetic and enjoyable take on a Haydn symphony I’ve experienced in quite some time, not least because the conductor encouraged a loose and rowdy spirit in the audience at St. Paul’s Ordway Concert Hall.

And the audience took that permission and ran with it, bursting into applause after Steve Kimball’s imaginative take on the opening timpani solo that gave the symphony its nickname, as well in response to a sparkling second-movement violin solo from Steven Copes, during which Egarr walked away from the podium and let the orchestra’s teamwork take over. It says something about the SPCO’s skills with this repertoire that the energy and precision never flagged a bit.

Egarr’s playfulness was on display from the concert’s opening moments, when he asked the orchestra to burst into Beethoven’s explosive opening chord on his overture to the ballet, “The Creatures of Prometheus,” before the audience had finished applauding. It proved a fine five-minute appetizer for the evening, Egarr and the orchestra taking its first fast section at a blistering clip before interjecting lots of Haydn-esque blasts and blares.

Alas, the concert’s energy dipped in the middle, when the orchestra performed the first work by 19th-century German composer Emilie Mayer that the SPCO has played in its 65-year history. Perhaps because they wanted to pay proper respect to this composer who surely struggled to get her music heard in her lifetime, the performance of her First Symphony lacked the spark found in their whimsical interpretations of Beethoven and Haydn.

Not until the symphony’s third movement did the music take on much of the peppy crispness found elsewhere on the program. I was intrigued enough to want to hear more of Mayer’s work, but this performance sounded something like a decaffeinated version of Felix Mendelssohn, employing some devices from that composer’s music for “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” but without the sense of mischief.

Ah, but the mood brightened considerably after intermission with the Haydn symphony. Suddenly, everyone on stage seemed to be having a blast, summoning up chills with the first movement’s foreboding basses and bassoons and lending a kind of tipsy teetering to the Andante’s exclamations from the strings. The minuet bounced vivaciously and the finale was tremendous fun, its chopped-up phrases tossed to and fro as Cassie Pilgrim’s oboe wailed atop them.

Yes, Egarr gets Haydn. But so does the SPCO.

With: Conductor Richard Egarr

What: Works by Beethoven, Emilie Mayer and Joseph Haydn

When: 7 p.m. Saturday; 2 p.m. Sunday

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

Tickets: $16-$68 (students and children free), 651-291-1144 or thespco.org

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