Philharmonia Brings Subtlety to Baroque

When Baroque-period instrumental groups resurfaced several decades ago, they announced themselves in harsh, grating, inexact tones, which were part of their claim for authenticity. The music wasn’t supposed to sound smooth-edged and pleasant, and it often didn’t.

San Francisco-based Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, founded in 1981, fortunately, is not one of those kinds of bands. It plays with pearly tones and revels in subtle orchestral colors.

Under the inspired leadership of Nicholas McGegan, the musicians do not engage in sewing-machine rhythms. They find the living breath in a phrase that makes it blossom.

All this was evident when Philharmonia played a Handel and Rameau program Tuesday night at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Newport Beach under the sponsorship of the Philharmonic Society.

Handel’s invention and wit simply soar in the two Concerti a due cori in F, HWV 333 and 334, which bracketed the equally bewitching Chaconne from “Terpsichore.”

Among many felicities in the first concerto--including “Lift Up Your Heads,” from “Messiah,” and the joyful Chaconne--was the ravishing matched duet in the final movement by oboists Marc Schachman and Gonzalo Ruiz.

The 14-part suite from Rameau’s final opera, “Les Boreades,” contains a great deal of graceful and direct scene-painting that probably would benefit from being connected to some visual staging. The sublime “Entree de Polimnie” is a long-lined melody of Handelian purity that seems to descend from the heavens. The suite ends in a lively Contredanse that connects court and country, high and low in an ode to joy.

It is impossible to watch this conductor and these musicians without appreciating and sharing in their joy over what they do.