Nicholas McGegan Returns to PBO Podium

Back cover design for last night’s program book

Last night in Herbst Theatre, Nicholas McGegan, now Music Director Laureate, returned to the podium of the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra (PBO). This occasion marked his 1000th performance with the ensemble. He celebrated the occasion with a program devoted to one of his favorite genres, dance music from the French baroque period.

The program, entitled The Surprises of Love, was framed by dance suites excerpted from two operas, André Campra’s La Carnaval de Venise, composed in 1699, and  Les surprises de l’Amour, composed by Jean-Philippe Rameau in 1748. Between these two offerings, McGegan presented a suite of five movements selected from the collection Symphonies pour le Festin Royal du Comte d’Artois, composed by François Francoeur. Taken as a whole, this amounted to an evening of 34 movements of a generous variety of lengths performed by an ensemble of strings, flutes, oboes, bassoons, horns, and percussion. (Yes, that last word was not a misprint. The performance of several of the movements involved different types of drum, including a tambourine; and, for one selection, percussionist Allen Biggs had to imitate the chirping of birds.)

McGegan was clearly delighted with this effort to revel in music explicitly composed for the entertainment of the listeners. He was dynamically energetic from the moment he first entered the stage to take the podium to the conclusion of the “Contredanse” movement that closed out the Rameau selections. (Presumably, he needed the intermission to catch his breath.)

The flute, oboe, and horn pairs added a wide breadth of coloration over the course of the evening; and I was delighted to see that each of the two flautists (Stephen Schultz and Mindy Rosenfeld) also drew upon the affordances of a piccolo. The bass line, in turn, was reinforced by a pair of bassoonists, Kate Van Orden and Nate Helgeson. There was also a comforting sense of order established by the chronological presentation of the three selections.

Taken as a whole, however, this was basically a delightful opportunity to sit back and enjoy the breadth of diversity in those 34 selections that McGegan had assembled; and, while all of the members of the string section were masked, the music itself served as a refreshing acknowledgement of our having made it through the most severe trials of the pandemic experience.