Swinging though sometimes sloppy Bach

Douglas Boyd made his name as a top-flight oboist, stretching the instrument’s repertoire as far as he could, from J.S. Bach and Vivaldi to Zimmermann and Ligeti. But as is often the case for star soloists confronted with limited solo possibilities, he has taken up conducting, mostly with one or another chamber orchestra.

That is where Boyd could be found Thursday night in the Renee and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall -- in front of members of the Pacific Symphony, minus his oboe (or a baton), in a program of top-drawer Bach.

The motive, as Boyd put it in his charming Scottish accent, was to welcome Bach back into the realm of a symphony subscription season. It’s not exactly a novel idea; other orchestras, including the L.A. Philharmonic, have been cautiously feeding their audiences some Bach now and then in defiance of the period-performance police.

But then, few conductors -- Esa-Pekka Salonen being one -- have dared to go all the way home, back to the blown-up, grandiose yet potentially thrilling orchestral transcriptions of Leopold Stokowski’s day. Nor did Boyd do so here. Instead he relied on small chamber-sized forces, and in the case of the “Brandenburg” Concerto No. 3, one instrument per part.

He brought along some good ideas for concert-hall Bach: tempos that felt just about right -- not too fast, never dragging -- along with a few expressive ritards and plenty of genuine toe-tapping Baroque swing in the rhythms.

Unfortunately, for whatever reason (short rehearsal time?), he couldn’t get the musicians to execute these ideas well in the first half. The “Brandenburg” No. 3 was very rough, even sloppy, despite the swinging undertow. The opening Sinfonia to the Cantata No. 29 -- instantly recognizable as an adaptation of the famous Preludio for Bach’s Partita No. 3 for solo violin -- sounded subdued, not well-balanced, and the accompaniment for soprano Kendra Colton in the Cantata No. 202 (“Wedding”) seemed at first leaden, then awkward.

Matters improved considerably in the second half. The orchestra got the Cantata No. 51 off to a solidly grounded start, with Colton coping bravely with the sometimes treacherous leaps in the vocal line.

Best of all was the concluding “Brandenburg” Concerto No. 5, where all cylinders at last were firing properly. Lucinda Carver, who alternated almost inaudibly between positiv organ and harpsichord in the previous pieces, could be heard in proper balance, with her harpsichord rotated 90 degrees and its lid installed.

Carver resisted the temptation to turn the first-movement cadenza into a relentless machine and got the dance rhythms in the finale to jump. PSO concertmaster Raymond Kobler and flutist Heather Clark performed capably here as well.

*

Pacific Symphony

Where: Renee and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, 615 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa

When: 8 p.m. today, 3 p.m. Sunday

Price: $22 to $150

Contact: (714) 755-5799 or www.pacificsymphony.org