No warhorses from this period orchestra

Last May, the Milanese recorder virtuoso and conductor Giovanni Antonini appeared with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in a complete cycle of a good old favorite, J.S. Bach’s “Brandenburg” Concertos. The concert sold out, as “Brandenburg” cycles usually do.

Thursday night, Antonini returned to a less-than-full Walt Disney Concert Hall, this time turning his hometown period-instrument group Il Giardino Armonico loose on a program that was, for the most part, not-so-familiar. Indeed, Antonini and company reached so far back into the archives that a search through some exhaustive websites turned up complete blanks on a few of the composers.

Such musical treasure hunts happen frequently in early-music land. There’s very little risk of alienating the audience, as the music will tend to conform to safe patterns that won’t send listeners screaming into the night. Once in a while, you might unearth an inspired, overlooked eccentric like Jan Dismas Zelenka.

In this case, there were a couple of sonatas for three violins and two violins respectively by Agostino Guerrieri, who managed a nice, swaying opening tune and not much else. The name Johann Gottlieb Goldberg will ring some bells -- he may or may not have been the “Goldberg” of Bach’s “Goldberg” Variations, depending upon the source -- but of the four movements of his Sonata in C Minor for two violins and viola, only the determined Gigue finale rose above the level of serviceable.

A recorder concerto by Pietro Nardini served mostly as a pleasant, innocuous vehicle for the amazing breath control and endlessly agile fingers of Antonini. A sonata by Johann Rosenmuller was scrapped in favor of a brief, moody, surprisingly Spanish-flavored toccata passacaglia by Giuseppe Doni, a solo piece for lutenist Luca Pianca. The encore was a lilting fragment from an Ilargo flautino concerto.

In other words, not much here.

On more-or-less recognizable territory, Antonini’s high-speed tonguing made astonishing work of Telemann’s Concerto in C, TWV 51:C1, and he seemed only slightly less comfortable with Vivaldi’s Concerto in A minor for recorder and two violins, RV 108. Both pieces used to be vehicles for star flutists until period instruments expropriated the field. Purcell’s “Three Parts Upon a Ground” bore an uncanny similarity to the infamous Pachelbel “Canon,” but Purcell carried the same idea through with a lot more panache.

Compared with other visiting period-performance bands of late, Il Giardino Armonico sported a rougher, even scrappier edge -- and there could have been more rhythmic zest in certain passages. As always, Disney Hall accurately conveyed the dim volume of the period instruments, with the hall’s resonance tempering the abrasive scraping of bows upon gut strings.