St. Paul Ensemble Shows a Split Personality

Vivaldi’s evergreen “Four Seasons” has suffered a number of indignities over the years. Conductor Hugh Wolff, violinist Gil Shaham and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra added one to the list Friday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa.

The main problem had nothing to do with their technique. They just shoved the music forward into the wrong period and style.

Instead of the crisp rhythms, clean articulations and bold dynamic shifts characteristic of the Baroque period, we heard meandering tempos, phrases, dynamics and moods. The music sounded artificial and confined, almost rococo in elegance and fragility.

Shaham treated the concertos as if they were virtuoso show-off pieces, distinguishing his mode of playing from that of the group and putting personal stamps on passages that were usually mirrored or shared by the ensemble. This concept fits music of a later century, but wildly distorts the programmatic nature of this piece.

The bizarre thing about all this was that later, after intermission, Wolff led a very stylish performance of Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony, and Shaham modestly sat in with the first violins.

The orchestra played with sweep, vigor and resonance. Ensemble was tight and well-integrated. The musicians responded alertly to Wolff’s intelligent and sensitive direction.

The concert, which was sponsored by the Philharmonic Society of Orange County, opened with Aaron Jay Kernis’ snazzy “Too Hot Toccata,” a six-minute work composed in 1996 at the end of Kernis’ three-year appointment as composer-in-residence for the orchestra.