Monday evening’s performance by the Australian Chamber Orchestra at Alice Tully Hall reminded me of the good old days of the Mostly Mozart Festival, when the performance quality was not great but we all charitably attributed this phenomenon to the hot weather. But the festival has improved exponentially in the last two years, and the old summer-camp atmosphere is no longer acceptable. Perhaps, living so far away, the Australians simply never got the message.

The program included a version of Beethoven’s “Kreutzer” Sonata, although not one for the ages. The orchestra’s director, Richard Tognetti, has arranged the piece for his own ensemble and, it seemed apparent, his own self-aggrandizement. The instrumentation of violin and strings sans piano distanced itself considerably from the haunting presence of Beethoven the performer, and the new combination of violin solo backed up by 17 strings substituted only a vapid homogeneity for the original taut interplay of catgut and ivory.

Given the wan nature of the group’s string sound, the resultant transcription had a certain pop connotation, somewhat like the efforts of Andre Rieu. This was classics lite, the work often degenerating into fake gypsy mode masquerading as excitement. Something was obviously missing in this reworking.

In fact, something was missing from every piece on the program. In the case of the normally disturbing Mozart Adagio and Fugue K. 546, it was drama. The opening adagio was limp and pallid, somewhat marred by sloppy entrances and exits. My ears perked up when the fugue started, however, as the three cellos – the only members of the group to play sitting down – and the single bass stated the theme both darkly and forcefully. I hoped against hope that the beginning of the piece had been purposefully toned down to produce this startling contrast, but this was hardly the case: The fugue, too, soon lapsed into pedestrianism.

When Mozart traveled to Australia, he could not have encountered the original Beethoven composition, but he certainly might have heard the two Bach pieces on Monday’s program. There are at least five ways to perform Bach keyboard concertos for modern audiences. Two, employing clavichord or fortepiano, require a delicate sense of quietude. The harpsichord version allows the orchestra to be of any size or dynamic range, since the solo instrument’s timbre can cut through the assembled haze of the ensemble. If using a modern piano, then a choice needs to be made between loud and soft, monumental or intimate.

Considering the size of Mr. Tognetti’s orchestra this night, soloist Angela Hewitt’s conscious decision to play quietly on a Fazioli piano was spot-on. She lacked the ability to sustain the lyricism of the Concerto No. 5 in F minor, however. In the largo she opted for a rather annoying staccato that separated each and every note somewhat artificially. She appears not to want to sing this music as much as to parse it.

Old Bach is not much help in these phrasing decisions, often leaving off seemingly vital considerations like dynamics, tempos, and even instrumentation from the printed score. But there has developed over time an oral tradition – or, if you will, an aural tradition – that guides pianists on their Baroque journeys. Ms. Hewitt approached the work so gingerly – somewhat ironic considering how accuracy challenged she was – that the music was subsumed by considerations of technique. She does have some technical strong points, especially an enviable ability to repeat rhythmic figures with absolute precision, but overall her proficiencies, like those of her accompanists, were in need of development.

The Concerto No. 1 in D minor is a brilliant example of Bach’s talent at creating tension, and yet, in Ms. Hewitt’s hands, this tautness was diffused, replaced with a rather mechanical similitude. Dynamics were eschewed in the third movement, again leaving the impression of a mathematically pure but ultimately uninteresting Rubik’s cube without artistic meaning. If one word could sum up my thoughts about each and every performance of the evening, that word would be “why?”