The actor seems to be in a good place now, what with a second shiny statue for his work on 30 Rock. And yet something about him - his recurrent bad-boy routine perhaps? - makes him an unlikely hero in the service of a delicate, perpetually fretting artform.

But classical music has a way of picking its acolytes, as Baldwin found out. One minute, he's listening to Charles Dutoit lead the Philadelphia Orchestra in Carnegie Hall; the next he's standing in front of an orchestra himself.

On Saturday night, he not only stood in front of the Philadelphia Orchestra in Verizon Hall to help open its 110th season, but he actually bowed at the podium and waved his arms up and down in worship of Dutoit. Baldwin seized the spotlight for some impromptu drama.

"You are so blessed to have this great orchestra in your city," he told the audience. "I hope you will do everything in your power to support one of the great musical institutions in the world - in the world."

The plea was a reverberation from the previous few weeks' events, including the revelation that the orchestra is seriously taking on water, financially speaking. Former board chairman Peter A. Benoliel stood on stage to accept the Philadelphia Orchestra Award from current board chairman Richard B. Worley, telling listeners much the same thing.

Baldwin underplayed slightly the emotional range in his scripted work. Copland's quilt of ideas by and about Lincoln has a list of incantations by readers who have the weight of deeds in democracy behind their delivery - Marian Anderson and Adlai Stevenson with this orchestra alone.

Baldwin didn't try to match the bigness of the music with his voice. The score works its way through potent statements of musical majesty, urgency, tenderness, and plucky industry even before the narrator's entrance, and there was nothing wrong with Baldwin's delivery, even if it was generally divorced from the moods of the music. This was not a Lincoln Portrait echoing from the monumental marble slabs of the Lincoln Memorial, but one conveyed with plain-spoken, folksy informality.

The 80-minute gala program opened with Berlioz's Roman Carnival Overture, which Dutoit handled with a correctness at the beginning that made the electricity all the more powerful when the conductor turned it on later.

In Saint-Saëns' Symphony No. 3, the "Organ," with organist Michael Stairs, Dutoit displayed the qualities that make him the right musical leader for this moment. There was a spot in the first movement where the ensemble entered fuzzily, and Dutoit knew just how to snap things back into place. His focus on the sound of the orchestra - concepts of blending, refinement, and rich sonorities - is obvious and rewarding. But such a deepness of sound does not happen by accident, or even as an automatic impulse of the players.

Dutoit is expressive, but judiciously so. He doesn't milk a moment for a second more than it is worth, preserving drama's potent place as rare and meaningful.

After the Saint-Saëns, as patrons were making their way out for dinner, there was a bit of a stir in the house. The audience had discovered Baldwin in the back of the hall, where he had been sitting listening to the work of others. Why anyone should have been surprised is a mystery. Friends do that for friends.