Music Review : Polished Work by Huggett, Philharmonia Orchestra

Even the most admirable, accomplished performances sometimes lack that ultimate musical goal: delight--the joy created and shared by playing that deeply communicates the composer’s feelings.

The San Francisco Bay Area-based Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra regularly achieves this goal, as it showed again Wednesday night in Leo S. Bing Theater at the L.A. County Museum of Art. On the eve of J.S. Bach’s birthday, guest director/violin soloist Monica Huggett led a program of three works by J.S., one by his son, Wilhelm Friedemann, and an item from the elder composer’s second cousin, Johann Bernhard Bach.

Though the 19-member ensemble, playing instruments built in the period in which the music was written, produces a diffuse and edgeless sound, the music it makes has vigor, rhythmic bounce and beauteous, stylish lines. The British musician presided over engaging performances in which she served as all-important soloist and leader.

Best was a tight yet unrushed reading of the Third “Brandenburg” Concerto in which the ensemble achieved handsome balances in the opening, maximal flow of thought in the slow movement, then an exhilarating, untroubled speed in the finale.

In a performance both affectionate and expert, harpsichordist John Butt made an ear-opening event of J.S. Bach’s own transcription of his Violin Concerto in E, BWV 1042, which became the Concerto in D, BWV 1054. Despite the instrument’s lack of projection in the 600-seat auditorium, this proved a well-spoken reading.

Wilhelm Friedemann’s quirky G-minor Overture was a fascinating centerpiece on this program; if it is less a masterpiece than a novelty, it exerted many charms in the ensemble’s detailed account.