MUSIC REVIEW : Harpsichord Program Is Less Than Heaven-Sent : Conductor Micah Levy enlists capable soloists, but pitch problems among some O.C. Chamber Orchestra members mar performance.

Micah Levy and his Orange County Chamber Orchestra have evolved a particular way of giving concerts. From the stage, conductor Levy offers modest, sometimes wry introductions to the selections. Informality reigns. Humor is a possibility.

His programming tends to be eclectic--even if, as on Thursday at the Irvine Barclay Theatre, it runs to a piquant recklessness. On Thursday, Levy and his handful of musicians ventured a program devoted to harpsichord concertos.

That’s right. A concert of harpsichord concertos. Well, mostly.

Levy’s theory seemed to be: If one is good, two must be better, and three is the best. And if you can multiply soloists as well--going from one to two to four-- you’d be in harpsichord heaven (which is what he called the program, although he confessed that “harpsichord mania” had been his first choice).

Levy led Bach’s Concerto in F minor (that’s one soloist), Bach’s Concerto for Two Harpsichords (with two), and Concerto for Four Harpsichords, Bach’s transcription of Vivaldi’s Concerto for Four Violins in Opus 3, “L’Estro Armonico.”

Bingo.

The soloists were Jennifer Paul, a rising star in this repertory; Patrick Lindley, William Neil Roberts and Nancy Sartain. Paul was the constant; Lindley joined her for the concerto for two.

Would that Levy had surrounded these capable and fluent soloists with vivid, in-tune accompaniment. Instead, his nine-member string group played slackly and with significant pitch problems. Correct balance between strings and keyboards also proved elusive.

Visual interest wasn’t helped by having the lids of the four harpsichords raised, obscuring all but the players’ legs from sight.

Paul also had a solo, the Scythian March from Joseph-Nicolas-Pancrace Royer’s forgotten 18th-Century opera “Zaide.” She called it “the most difficult piece I know how to play. It sounds as if it was written by a madman . . . by a contemporary madman.”

Well, more like a 19th-Century madman. The piece demands Lisztian virtuosity, which Paul provided with apparent ease.

(Incidentally, no one could ever march to such huffing and churning and intricate butterfly arpeggios. But maybe it could start a Scythian Bacchanale).

Lindley also had a chance to play alone, in two short improvisations on themes suggested from the audience. But what promised to be an intriguing recap of common 18th-Century concert practice turned gimmicky, with only a few hints of Lindley’s powers at this kind of thing.