MUSIC REVIEW : La Stravaganza Performs at Seal Beach Chamber Festival

Their name means, roughly, “the extravagance” or “oddity,” but there wasn’t anything particularly extravagant or odd in the way the three members of La Stravaganza performed Thursday at the McGaugh School in Seal Beach.

Their program stands out, however, in the flyer describing the nine-concert (this being number five) Seal Beach Chamber Music Festival: It is the only program of Baroque music. La Stravaganza would be the natural choice for such a program; the players are early-music specialists who use period instruments or replicas.

More than that, violinist Gregory Maldonado, cellist-countertenor Mark Chatfield and archlutanist Mark Eagan show a thorough knowledge of the principles of Baroque performance, a high degree of fluency with the style and an audible enthusiasm for the music.

It did not take the listener long to become accustomed to the Baroque style of phrasing, the limited use of vibrato or the mellow, less-penetrating sounds the Baroque instruments produce.

That sound is achieved in part by the lutanist’s use of gut strings, which, Eagan said, are highly vulnerable to the elements. He added that a contemporary observer complained that a lutanist who lived to be 80 would spend 60 of those years tuning his instrument. So would a violinist and so would a cellist, if Thursday’s concert was any indication: Intonation proved the only major technical problem of the evening.

In works by Bach, Vivaldi, Geminiani and Mouret, La Stravaganza showed great rhythmic cohesiveness and unanimity of interpretation. Balance problems, however, arose in Vivaldi’s Trio Sonata in C minor, RV 83 and Francesco Geminiani’s Sonata No. 2 in D minor for Cello and Continuo, as Eagan, serving as the sole continuo player, became very difficult to hear.

Vocal purity, textual clarity and stylish phrasing characterized Chatfield’s singing in two Purcell songs. Eagan accompanied effectively and offered a refined account of a Dowland song.

The audience seemed most delighted with Jean-Joseph Mouret’s “Symphonies for the King’s Supper,” and with good reason. The three brought great elegance, considerable flair and terpsichorean vitality to the short, stylized dances that conclude with the familiar “Rondeau.”