At the start of his program Saturday with the Padua Chamber Orchestra at the Maine Center for the Arts, David Shifrin simply smiled amiably toward the audience. He let the suspense build, and then raised his clarinet for Mozart’s Concert in A Major for Clarinet and Orchestra. It was instantly clear that Shifrin doesn’t just play the clarinet; he performs it, disseminates it, animates it.

Mozart wrote this piece because of his appreciation for the clarinet, then a new kid on the Baroque instrument block. This particular piece was written for a clarinetist said to possess a timbre “so soft and lovely that nobody who has a heart can resist it.” Shifrin lived up to that original description and then surpassed it with his delighted style.

He applies the physicality of jazz performance to classical music by literally getting down on clarinet and nearly dancing out every note. Shifrin is like a storyteller whose corporeal narration of a Mozart “story” has all the spunk and funk and feeling of an actor revealing a scene. He has a most fetching way of involving the audience by moving the flared clarinet bell across the expanse of the concert hall during longer passages.

The Padua Chamber Orchestra, with conductor David Golub, had its own marvelous story to tell, too, in an easy-listening program of Bach, Mozart and Dvorak. With Shifrin, this 25-piece orchestra allowed him to both dominate and integrate. On its own, however, it felicitously excelled in presenting a robust and intrepid sound, particularly in a virile presentation of the Brandenburg Concerto No. 5. Golub was at the piano for this one, and performed a solo section of utter magnetism.

As conductor, Golub moves like a human train wheel, putting into motion a grand and elegant machine of musicians. The esprit de corps for such an operation was especially fascinating to watch in Mozart’s Symphony No. 21 in A Major.

Golub clearly trusts this orchestra, which was founded in 1966 — relatively young as orchestras go. But it has a maturity and sophistication beyond its years, and the 700 or so audience members at Saturday’s concert were among the lucky ones who get to hear this bright group during its premiere tour in America. If only more people could hear such a heart-wrenching rendition of Dvorak’s Serenade for Strings, Op. 22, there might be more civility in the world.

From beginning to end, this was a feel-good concert, the kind that leaves you with one of those dippy grins and a sense that all is well in the world.