Last night Dave and I heard Jeremy Denk and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields playing Josef Suk’s Serenade for Strings, two J.S. Bach keyboard concertos, and Antonín Dvořák’s Serenade for Strings.

The best came first: Suk’s Serenade was just drop-dead stunning, beautifully nuanced, lovely rich tone from all the string sections, played with all kinds of care and attention to detail.

Bach’s Keyboard Concerto no. 2 was a lot less wonderful. The orchestra sounded great, and Mr. Denk sounded great when he was playing alone, but whenever they were playing together, things got muddy. Mr. Denk played with a lot of rhythmic freedom in contrast to the orchestra, which played in strict tempo; this might give a appealingly jazzy, improvisational feel to the music if it were played on a harpsichord and/or played in a smaller, less reverberant hall, but on a grand piano in the huge space that is Davies Hall, it more often just sounded blurred. Dave hypothesized that perhaps they hadn’t been able to rehearse much in the hall beforehand because of the chamber music concert that afternoon, so hadn’t had a chance to adjust to the acoustics of the hall.

After intermission, the Keyboard Concerto no. 4 was much better. Mr. Denk played with a bit less rubato, and the orchestra dropped down to a whisper of a pianissimo whenever the piano was playing over them, and the result was much clearer. Still not the dry sound of Bach that I’m used to, and it lacked a sense of conversation going on between the soloist and orchestra that I tend to expect in Bach, but it was enjoyable enough.

With Dvořák’s Serenade for Strings, though, we were back to wonderfulness again, with all the same beauty and care that had made the Suk so glorious. I do hope they get around to recording these pieces, if they haven’t already — particularly the Suk, as it’s not done very often.

As an encore, the Academy performed a lively piece that sounded like it must be by Percy Grainger, but we’re not sure what it was.

Later: Dave finally figured out what the encore was: the last movement of Holst’s St. Paul’s Suite.