The St. Paul Chamber Orchestra aims for the head, the soul and the heart in its latest concert, with three pieces of music that grapple with big questions, interrogate the spirits and channel great feeling. The orchestra performed the program at Shepherd of the Valley Lutheran Church on Thursday evening before heading to the Ordway Hall. With a mesmerizing solo by principal cellist Julie Albers, intriguing explorations of dissonance, recorded music and dialectic melodies, the music creates a moody, thoughtful evening.

The orchestra begins with Franz Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 22, known as “The Philosopher” Symphony. Its first movement was written as a dialogue between two French horns and two English horns, an instrument from the oboe family that had recently been invented when Haydn wrote the piece.

Principal oboe player Cassie Pilgrim, in her opening remarks, said the music was meant to be a conversation between the angels (the English horns) and mortals (French horns). “Haydn himself said it was like a conversation between God and an unrepentant sinner,” she said.

The melody is underscored by a series of pulsing broken chords, and the sound of a harpsichord adds a stately flourish. Ponderous and searching, the first movement lays way to the faster-paced Presto movements, with a flirtatious Menuetto (a French dance form) in between. Throughout, Pilgrim and fellow oboist Sarrah Bushara, along with horn players Matthew Wilson and Michael Petruconis, imbue the piece with a dynamic energy.

For the second piece, the SPCO performs “Magnum Ignotum,” (The Great Unknown). Written by Giya Kancheli, a composer born in the Soviet Republic of Georgia who moved to Germany and then Belgium after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the work incorporates Georgian folk music recordings in its reflection of awe.

A solo chant opens the work, and the recorded singer is soon joined by bassoon and clarinet. Kancheli plays with dissonance in the music, yet a melancholy sweetness prevails throughout. Ten wind instruments and a double bass make up the orchestration, with bassist Zachary Cohen mimicking the sound of higher string instruments at times, as he plays at the very edge of the fingerboard.

Other recordings of vocal folk music are interspersed in the brooding piece filled with aching pauses, startling trills and echoes. It’s eerie, discordant music in search of the wild places beyond the reach of our understanding. It concludes with the mysterious sound of faraway bells.

Albers, who joined the faculty of the prestigious New England Conservatory in Boston earlier this year, had her powers on full display as she took on Edward Elgar’s Cello Concerto, in a new arrangement for chamber orchestra by Iain Farrington. Albers’ rich vibrato and expressive bowing made the music sing, and in the quick sections, her agile fingers moved through the notes with effortless grace.

The music has luxurious legato sections and boisterous cadenzas, plus intriguing pizzicato. Albers digs into the strings, almost shredding them like a heavy metal guitar at times.

A flop when it first premiered in 1919 due to lack of rehearsal time, Elgar’s Cello Concerto eventually became a beloved cello solo, in part because in capable hands, it’s a tour de force for the cellist. That’s what happens in the case of this performance.

If you go

Who: The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra

What: Julie Albers plays Elgar’s Cello Concerto

When: 7 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 12

Where: The Ordway, 345 Washington St., St. Paul

Tickets: $16-$68

Accessibility: Elevators access all floors of Concert Hall, accessibility seating for all mobility devices (request when buying tickets); service animals welcome (inform ticket representative); listening units and large print available upon request. One single occupancy, accessible restroom in the Music Theater lobby. Ordway.org/accessibility-services.

Capsule: Julie Albers soars in this concert full of dissonance, meditation and feeling.

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