Concert shows us Paul McCartney’s heart, sort of | Review

Alongside his unbounded success on the pop charts, one-time Beatle Paul McCartney also has dipped his hand into the classical realm from time to time. Sunday, in Steinmetz Hall at Orlando’s Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts, the Bach Festival Society of Winter Park tackled one such effort: A 2006 oratorio titled “Ecce Cor Meum (Behold My Heart).”

McCartney may be baring his heart, but his message sounds simplistic, even when gussied up with lovely strings, organ interludes, trumpet trills and more.

Interestingly, the work is at its best when the music is simplest — a lovely little lament to his late wife, Linda, led by a plaintive oboe melody.

The work’s first movement introduced soloist Karen Vuong, who found warmth in her upper register as well as pleasing diction. It also brought the Bach Festival Youth Choir into the spotlight; the young singers’ ahhs adding to the texture. But rather than building to a conclusion, the movement meandered to its end.

The second movement is the most song-like, and the choir made the most of the melody, with Vuong providing needed gravitas. It lovingly concluded with choir, instruments and soloist ringing out like the finale ultimo of some old Rodgers & Hammerstein musical.

The latter movements suffer in that the music didn’t always match the emotions of the lyrics. McCartney’s words tell us the performers are “delighted when we sing,” but the music doesn’t sound that happy. It’s a strange tonal mismatch, though perhaps partially explained by the death of Linda McCartney while he was composing.

But there are stretches where the imagination lets loose and the mingling of love and music makes perfect sense. “Here in my music I show you my heart,” McCartney writes, and so it can’t be condescending to say that even when “Ecce Cor Meum” falls short of the highest heights, it never sounds less than heartfelt.

The program’s first half featured two Shakespeare-inspired orchestra-only works, including a solid reading of Tchaikovsky’s mostly somber “Romeo & Juliet Overture-Fantasia.”

In a work new to me, the Bach orchestra danced through a charming musical suite Arthur Sullivan (of Gilbert & Sullivan fame) wrote for the masquerade ball scene in a production of “The Merchant of Venice.”

The opening had a beautiful lightness hinting (correctly) at the playfulness to come. The following movement had a pleasing motion, with the snare drum keeping things on pace. You could sense imaginary dancers gracefully inhabiting the swelling phrases of the “valse,” and it all wound up with an energetic finale.

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If it feels like I just wrote about the Bach Festival Society at the Dr. Phillips Center, it’s because I did: The group was there last Sunday with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and in this weekend’s program gave a short “encore” performance of two previously performed pieces and one that was cut from the earlier concert.

With the smaller number of musicians in the Bach Festival Orchestra, as compared with the Royal Phil, the choir’s voices sounded even lustier on “The Anvil Chorus” from Verdi’s “Il Trovatore.” And the men’s opening strains of “Shenandoah” were as lovely as before.

The new number, the American spiritual “Saints Bound for Heaven,” rang out around the hall with clarion-clear triumph and rejoicing if slightly muddled words. Now there was some real joy.

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