IF YOU GO: Marin Alsop and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra

Powell Symphony Hall, 718 N. Grand

3 p.m. Sunday, April 28

$15.50 to $105; 314-534-1700 or www.slso.org

The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra has made an art of well-constructed programs under music director David Robertson — but the fit for this weekend’s concerts seemed forced.

On Friday night at Powell Symphony Hall, guest conductor Marin Alsop led the orchestra in two very different contemporary works and one warhorse. The program notes attempted to tie them together, but it still seemed a fairly random grouping.

The orchestra’s playing, however, was impeccable, showing off its command of contrasting styles.

The opener was a fascinating reworking of a 300-year-old composition by Henry Purcell, American composer Steven Stucky’s “Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary, after Purcell.” Written for winds, percussion, piano and harp – the only stringed instrument in the ensemble – it takes Purcell’s melancholy original and recasts it, playing plays with the sonorities and harmonies.

It’s not often that suspended flower pots are used as part of a percussion batterie((CQ)); they don’t sound like much, as it turns out, but they did catch the eye in John Adams’ “The Dharma at Big Sur.”

The piece, from 2003, is written for electric violin and orchestra, and incorporates elements of minimalism, jazz and a heavy Eastern influence. At times it proved hypnotic; at others, it sounded like an electric acid hoe-down. (Sound engineer Brian Mohr received credit for his work on the title page.)

Leila Josefowicz, with her hair arranged in a blonde ponytail and her face usually arranged in a pout, was clad in an unfortunate, unflattering orange gown. She performed her long slip-sliding solo lines effectively, shining over the orchestra’s supporting playing. She seemed comfortable both with the skeletal-looking electric violin, and with the eclectic style of the piece.

Alsop was very much at home in the Adams, in particular; and a lot of fun to watch. She brings experience and care to contemporary music, and makes a strong case for it.

She had less to contribute to Ludwig van Beethoven’s familiar Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, op. 55, “Eroica.” Her reading seldom flowed where the score demands it, and she had a tendency to substitute speed and volume for genuine intensity.

The orchestra was in its element throughout: these musicians are as comfy with the contemporary as they are with the classics. Alsop’s zippiness didn’t faze them. They took fast, complex passages like a sports car negotiating tight curves at high speed: no fishtailing here.