OAE/Bruggen, Queen Elizabeth Hall, London

On paper, this Queen Elizabeth Hall concert, put together by the period players of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and their joint principal guest conductor, Frans Bruggen, promised the ultimate postmodernist tease.

On paper, this Queen Elizabeth Hall concert, put together by the period players of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and their joint principal guest conductor, Frans Bruggen, promised the ultimate postmodernist tease. For in the centre of a programme ranging from 17th-century Marini and Purcell to 18th-century Bach and Quantz, was plumped - like an agitated cuckoo in the nest - Stravinsky's Concerto in D for string orchestra, dating from 1946. Bruggen, considering the piece to be "an intrinsic re-enactment of Baroque style", had decided to try it out on gut strings and at the Baroque pitch of A=415Hz (modern instruments are tuned to A=440Hz).

But while this late product of Stravinsky's so-called neo-Classical period opens with gigue-like material and invokes Baroque aria and rondo forms in its second and third movements, scarcely a bar of its angular, scrunchy progress could have appeared in any real 18th century concerto. Or were we all unknowingly caught in an historical triple-take? Certainly that controversial scholar Richard Taruskin has long argued that what passes for period performance is really a 20th-century invention anyway, stemming mainly from the aesthetic of Stravinsky.

In the event, and despite the players' enjoyment of its naughty harmonic side-slips and rhythmic short circuits, the Concerto in D received the least dynamic performance of the evening. Evidently it needs the security of the modern string orchestra, with its chin rests, steel strings and so on, after all. But it cast a nicely relativistic light over the rest of the programme.

This opened with a pair of short pieces using similar material in quite different ways: the celebrated Chacony in G minor, Z730, by Purcell, and a slightly earlier but eloquent passacaglia by the Italian, Biagio Marini. Then there was the Organ Concerto in D minor that Bach could have written, drawn from the two movements with organ obligato in Cantata 156, and from Cantata 35 adapted for keyboard - all derived in turn from a lost oboe concerto and tentatively catalogued as BWV1059b. No matter what the provenance; Robert Howarth rippled it out with relish.

That peerless advocate of the baroque flute, Lisa Beznosiuk, opened the second half in Joachim Quantz's Flute Concerto in G major QV5:174, spinning a plaintively wandering line over pulsating chords in the slow movement and carrying off the florid finale with never a fluff. Finally Bruggen dug into Bach's Suite No 1 in C major, setting dignified tempos, keeping all textural parts alive and encouraging the longer phrases to sing - a fascinating contrast with the crisper approach of Masaaki Suzuki and the Academy of Ancient Music reviewed here last week. But then this cornucopia of invention can respond to many different approaches - doubtless even to the manner of Stravinsky.