Philharmonia Baroque Finds Right Venue

Acoustics, lighting and total ambience affect the listening experience more than we sometimes think. That fact was underlined in the first Orange County appearance by Philharmonia Baroque, the period-instrument band from San Francisco, at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Newport Beach.

It was the same, skilled 25-member orchestra we have heard regularly for the last four years at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and it played its program with its usual expertise. But the thrills on Tuesday night were new, and at least in part could be attributed to the venue.

The airy, spacious and high-ceilinged sanctuary at St. Andrew’s added joy and mellowness to a most handsome program of music by Telemann, Vivaldi, Tartini, Locatelli, Giuseppe Sammartini and Bach, vigorously and sensitively played by the ensemble and conducted with elan by Nicholas McGegan.

Under McGegan’s probing leadership, all this music came to life, its characteristics defined, its thrusts delivered and its details clarified. It couldn’t have hurt that this generous program was being performed by the group for the fifth time since last Thursday; the delight the players seemed to take in the playing became palpable, practically measurable.

Besides the music director, the heroes of the occasion were soloists Marion Verbruggen and Gonzalo Ruiz.

To concertos for recorder by Vivaldi and Sammartini, Verbruggen brought an elegant musicality, contagious expressivity and more textural and dynamic variety than one expects from the small instrument. McGegan & Co. gave her tight, affectionate support, which they also provided the virtuosic Ruiz, who played Tartini’s lean and touching Oboe Concerto in F, a work receiving its Southern California premiere.