L.A. Baroque Orchestra in Santa Monica Program

The Los Angeles Baroque Orchestra, which has quickly asserted itself as a valuable component of the Southland musical scene, was not heard to best advantage on Friday in St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, Santa Monica.

In a program otherwise devoted to Mozart, director-violinist Gregory Maldonado opened by leading his charges through a C.P.E. Bach Sinfonia in G, which on this occasion included some dissonances that even that quirky old avant-gardist would have found too exotic for his taste.

Ensemble proved only marginally neater in the subsequent offering, Mozart’s Concerto in E-flat, K. 449, with Robert Winter as the stylish, energetic soloist on a modern reproduction of one of the composer’s own pianos. Winter’s marksmanship, however, proved several notches below his musicianship.

Here, too, a problem that pervaded the evening asserted itself: sagging pitch, with the orchestra’s gut strings balking at the dry heat of the church interior.

Finally, one could take exception to a seeming stylistic aberration: Maldonado’s decision to supplement his nine-member string band with a continuo underpinning of archlute(!) and harpsichord. OK (perhaps), for the 16-year-old’s Divertimento in D, K. 136, but a tenuous proposition at best for the very late “Eine kleine Nachtmusik.”

Still, both gentle twangers did lend some sonic spice to these overly familiar and most likely underrehearsed pieces.