MUSIC REVIEWS : Organist John Walker at Baroque Festival in Corona del Mar

Stylistic conflicts marred the opening concert of the eighth annual Corona del Mar Baroque Festival at St. Michael & All Angels Episcopal Church on Sunday.

New York-based organist John Walker adapted his style to suit the various solo works and concertos, which ranged from works by Frescobaldi to Michel Corrette.

But the small string orchestra, directed by festival founder and music director Burton Karson, remained locked into a single vision of quasi-period authenticity. This approach included virtually no vibrato, phrasing in short, disjunct arcs and apparently startling freedom and unpredictability in dynamic accent.

In solo work, Walker demonstrated strong, clear, balanced lines and made use of modest, telling, appropriate registrations on the electronic action Abbott & Sieker instrument.

He approached Bach’s transcription of Vivaldi’s Concerto in D minor, BWV 596, with leisurely and elastic rhythms, interpolating an extended cadenza before the Fugue and adding embellishments.

He tended toward the lyric and meditative in Frescobaldi’s Toccata V (from Book Two) and Giovanni’s Casini’s “Pensiero per l’organo VIII.” He almost made Nicolaus Bruhns’ ungainly, flamboyant, exploratory Prelude and Fugue in E minor convincing. But two arrangements of French Christmas carols by Corrette proved less interesting.

In works with orchestra, Walker was elegant and graceful in Sammartini’s Concerto No. 1; sprightly and nimble in Corrette’s Concerto in D minor, Op. 26, No. 6, and featherly light and sparkling in Handel’s Concerto in G minor, Op. 4, No. 1.

The orchestra offered rough vigor and energy throughout but suffered from erratic pitch, cohesion problems and surprisingly frequent slippages between instrumentalists and soloist.

Concertmaster Peter Marsh so dominated the group’s activities--his ski-slope phrasing was particularly grating in the Handel Concerto--that it became unclear whether he was following Karson or whether Karson was following him. At any rate, Karson’s conducting was broad, spacious and minimally interpretive.

The program also included Albinoni’s infernal, spurious Adagio (arranged by Remo Giazotto), conducted with taffy-pull broadness.

The four-concert festival will end Sunday.