Antonio Vivaldi occupies an unusual place in the performance history of the early 21st century. Although he composed more than 1,000 works, including several dozen concertos for violin and orchestra, he is known almost exclusively for but a quartet of these pieces grouped together as “The Four Seasons.” On Tuesday evening at Zankel Hall, the Little Orchestra Society took the plunge and ignored the most popular of his works in order to present something somewhat different.

This is the 18th year of its annual survey of “Vivaldi’s Venice,” a series in which the ensemble has performed more than 200 of the master’s works. Music director Dino Anagnost led an interesting presentation, spicing up the proceedings with entertaining and educative comments designed to keep the audience alert and receptive. His most effective manner of communication is to feature his small string orchestra, whose excellent, disciplined music making carried the evening.

This season’s subject was the Two Annas, a pair of women who had a major effect on Vivaldi’s life, both musical and emotional. One, Anna Maria della Pieta, was a foundling who grew into one of the signature violin virtuosos of her day. For her, Vivaldi wrote more than 30 concertos, and this night we were treated to three of them, performed by Maria Bachmann.

Ms. Bachmann is known more as a contemporary music specialist, but displayed her bona fides in the Baroque with great panache. Playing on a Gagliano from 1782, her tone was recognizably bright, her dexterity impressive, her colorings expressive within the strict guidelines of the stylistic approach of the turn of the 18th century. She soloed in the concertos in D Minor, RV 248, and B Flat Major, RV363, as well as the Concerto for Violin and Double Orchestra in D Major, RV 582. The orchestral accompaniment was clean and crisp throughout.

Nowadays the stuff of a novelty act, the mandolin was a favorite instrument in the courts of the time, and Scott Kuney fronted the Concerto for Mandolin in C Major, RV 425. Interestingly, there are no trills in this piece; all is either strummed or enunciated on a single-note basis. Mr. Kuney was an ebullient voice, although in the final Allegro he began to sound oddly dry. If he were singing his part, he would have been described as hoarse.

But the highlights of the evening were the arias from the Vivaldi opera, and sacred music. The second Anna in Vivaldi’s life was the diva Anna Giro, recalled this evening by contralto Jennifer Hines. Ms. Hines has appeared at the Metropolitan Opera in Wagner’s “Ring” cycle and was a cast member in James Levine’s memorable mountings of Arnold Schoenberg’s “Moses and Aaron” some years ago. She was terrific in the wild “Amoroso” given to the sorceress Alcina in “Orlando Furioso,” and deeply resonant in scenes from the “Stabat Mater,” a piece that Vivaldi the cleric composed for women to sing behind a latticework screen, giving rise to the term “nightingales’s cages” to describe their setting, wherein Maestro Anagnost induced a throbbing pulse from his assembled throng.

If nothing else, Vivaldi was an extremely cunning melodist and this new movement to explore his more than 20 mature operas and many choral works is a welcome phenomenon. His music is truly infectious: I found myself after the concert wandering around my apartment late at night like Robert Downey Jr. in that endearingly quirky film with the terrible title, “Two Girls and a Guy,” singing a pretty darn good high-register version of the Cum sancto spiritu from the red priest’s “Gloria.”