Dry Baroque pieces from Down Under

The Australian Chamber Orchestra is not known as an outfit that specializes in any particular style or period. Nevertheless, it arrived at Caltech’s Beckman Auditorium on Sunday afternoon with a Baroque/early Classical program (with one small exception) that a period-performance band would not hesitate to claim.

Originally, the Australians were to be at Walt Disney Concert Hall, but the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s “Tristan” activities wiped out the available dates in April, and so the Coleman Chamber Concerts grabbed the group instead. Although this turn of events may have been a coup for the Coleman in rounding out its 103rd season, it was not a boon for listeners.

The Australians -- who play standing up (except, of course, for the cellos and harpsichord), led from the concertmaster’s desk by Richard Tognetti -- may use modern instruments, but they were scrupulous about observing period-performance swells, sharp articulation, little or no vibrato, racing tempos and the like. That didn’t come off very well in the parched acoustics of Beckman, where the ensemble sounded dry and sometimes unpleasant in timbre. A little of the Douglas fir-lined resonance of Disney might have gone a long way toward tempering the effect.

They dealt with mostly top-flight material: concerti grossi from Corelli’s Opus 6 and Handel’s Opus 6, one of Van Wassenaer’s Concerti Armonici that was long attributed to Pergolesi (though it sounds nothing like him), Vivaldi’s popular Concerto for Four Violins in B minor and one of C.P.E. Bach’s dynamically quirky “Hamburg” string sinfonias.

Haydn’s Cello Concerto in C quickly became a vehicle for star soloists after its rediscovery in 1961, and the Australians had one at hand, Pieter Wispelwey. Alas, the tempos were taken at a brisk lock-step pace, and Wispelwey, weaving in and out of the texture, had little incentive to sing. The finale was played so fast that it became more of a stunt than something that made musical sense. (Wispelwey added a waywardly phrased prelude from a J.S. Bach cello suite as an encore.)

For their encore, the Australians reached for something quite different -- a string orchestra transcription of Debussy’s “The Girl With the Flaxen Hair” -- and presto!, their playing suddenly took on a warmth and three-dimensional quality never hinted at earlier.