Still, as Wednesday night's first of three in this Verizon Hall series proved, once the music starts, even specious justifications melt away. Only the most churlish could fail to be moved by the string sweep and peaceable woodwinds in Stokowski's gloriously fat corruption of Bach's "Sheep May Safely Graze."

Opening night was covered by the umbrella of baroque (last night was devoted to the classical era, tonight the Romantic). Associate conductor Rossen Milanov presided over a concert format that grouped movements of pieces and explained a bit about the inner workings of the music or the composer's intention. He read from the sonnet that makes Vivaldi's The Four Seasons so explicitly programmatic, then concertmaster David Kim took his fine sound to the mosquitoes and thunderstorms of "Summer."

With audience engagement having become a kind of holy grail to arts groups, it was fascinating to see the effect the experience had. Overnight, the orchestra's audience grew 50 percent younger and 100 percent more enthusiastic.

These nights are not for everyone. To hear the Pachelbel Canon so rhythmically limp, unendowed with any particular interpretive idea, was no joy, though the name must have been the draw for some listeners who would not have been moved to buy a ticket at the sight of "Da tempeste il legno infranto" and "Se pietà di me non senti" from Handel's Julius Caesar. Soprano Angela Meade made her orchestra debut with these excerpts, applying her wonderful sound to quick rushes of notes impressively delineated. Meade, who works with Astral Artists, the local group that selects and assists musicians with a high level of talent and personality, has a long list of attractive characteristics. A few minor problems with intonation aside, she was in command vocally and even managed a compelling point of view.

If the orchestral playing sometimes emitted that dull, we-could-do-this-with-our-hands-tied-behind-our-backs quality, the soloists in Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 shook off any hint of passivity. The ensemble is chamber-music sized, each solo part quite exposed - which exposed the fact that for this concert the orchestra had at least nine string players who, to use musician's parlance, had done some respectable woodshedding.