Previn Leads St. Luke’s--Cautiously : Music review: With Andre Previn conducting, the progressive orchestra plays safe and sane fare in its West Coast debut.

The Orchestra of St. Luke’s, which made its West Coast debut Tuesday courtesy of the Philharmonic Society at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, isn’t much like the other symphonic machines that clog our national-tour maps.

The roster is young, and so is the institution. Its aesthetic profile is progressive.

The orchestra, now in residence at the Manhattan School of Music, evolved in 1979 from a chamber ensemble housed at the Church of St. Luke-in-the-Fields in Greenwich Village. More than half the 48 players, not incidentally, are women.

Although Roger Norrington served as official music director from 1990 to 1994, St. Luke’s plays a large variety of programs each year under a large variety of visiting maestros.

The current boss pro tem is Andre Previn, not seen on a local podium since his acrimonious departure from the Los Angeles Philharmonic three years ago. For introductory purposes, he concentrated on 18th-Century basics--his generic brand of Haydn and Mozart. It should be noted, however, that St. Luke’s is an institution that resists typecasting.

Under other conductors, it plays old music with proper period flourishes. It accompanies famous opera stars and big-name fiddlers for special concerts, telecasts and recordings. It dabbles in modernism, or reasonable facsimiles thereof, when the likes of John Adams and Robert Craft come a-calling. It prides itself on bringing chamber-music sensitivity even to relatively grandiose challenges.

Essentially, St. Luke’s remains a musical gun for hire, and, under the right conditions, a very good one. Unlike its elderly rivals, it doesn’t play a long series of subscription programs each year in a given locale. It doesn’t have the luxury of a reliable constituency. It cannot look back in smugness on a rich and glorious past. It doesn’t command a lot of cash.

Its chief attributes would seem to be flexibility, energy, availability and extreme versatility. This orchestra, after all, boasts a discography that embraces a lot of Bach and Vivaldi, Kathleen Battle’s Christmas album, an ambitious Stravinsky survey, intimate Beethoven under Michael Tilson Thomas, diverse Mozart divertimenti , and--oh, yes--something called “Blind Man’s Zoo,” attributed to a compositional force identified as 10,000 Maniacs.

Forget the Three B’s. St. Luke’s thrives on taking chances. This is the sort of organization that gives eclecticism a good name.

Under the circumstances, the safe-and-sane concert at Segerstrom Hall on Tuesday turned out to be a double disappointment. The repertory offered no surprises, and the performances were, for the most part, drab.

Previn, who recently underwent major heart surgery, never resembled a galvanizing force on the podium. His forte has always involved emotional severity and intellectual restraint. On this occasion, unfortunately, the interpretations seemed not just tasteful but muted, not just objective but detached. What might have been illuminating ended up seeming perfunctory.

The orchestra did play with clarity and reasonable precision. The lean tone and taut line exerted a certain aura of elegance. Balances were carefully gauged. Textures were defined with an obvious concern for transparency.

But not much happened. Haydn’s Symphony No. 102, which opened the program, sounded pretty much like Mozart’s “Prague” Symphony, which closed it. The impact was dutiful rather than beautiful.

One could savor little dynamic variety here and little delineation of character. Previn provided little rhythmic propulsion, little wit or charm. In context, repeated passages seemed redundant--mere structural imperatives. Haydn and Mozart just plodded along.

It was pleasant in its simple way. It also was bland.

The temperature rose a bit in the centerpiece, Mozart’s Flute Concerto No. 1, K.313, thanks primarily to a soloist from the ranks: Elizabeth Mann. With extraordinary breath control, perky extroversion (the cadenzas were her own), and an arching legato line for the slow movement, she offered a telling demonstration of virtuosity at the service of musicality.

Previn and Mann’s colleagues mustered sympathetic accompaniment. Even here, however, one longed for the ennobling punctuation of subtle nuances. One longed for an occasional pianissimo to offset the pervasive mezzo-forte comfort.

Perhaps next time . . .