Just a week before the 100th anniversary of the Anzac landing at Gallipoli during World War I, a musical representative of Australia paid a visit to Princeton to present a concert of crisp playing, musical clarity, and joy. The Australian Chamber Orchestra, celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, brought its unique performing style to Richardson Auditorium last Thursday night (as part of Princeton University Concerts) in a program of Prokofiev, Mozart, and innovative English composer Jonny Greenwood.

The piano works of Sergei Prokofiev are not well-known to concert audiences and orchestral transcriptions of these works even less so. Prokofiev’s Visions fugitives, a collection of 20 short piano pieces composed between 1915 and 1917, capture the composer’s concise harmonies and rhythmic treatments. Beginning in the mid-1940s, arrangers and conductors began to transcribe these short works for string ensembles. The Australian Chamber Orchestra presented 16 of the 20 pieces on last week’s program, including one orchestrated by Chamber Orchestra conductor and concertmaster Richard Tognetti.

The Prokofiev pieces were musical miniatures of precision, and the Chamber Orchestra played the transcriptions with a lean and well-unified string sound. With all players except the cellos playing from a standing position, the Australian Chamber Orchestra demonstrated that all members of the ensemble were soloists, yet could play solidly together with a fresh and vibrant sound. Throughout the Prokofiev selections, the string players showed unified bowings and an ability to change styles in unison.

The Australian Chamber Orchestra was joined by New York clarinetist Charles Neidich for a historically informed and elegant performance of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A Major. So accurate was his performance historically that Mr. Neidich had an instrument built to replicate an 18th-century “bass clarinet.” Unlike the modern bass clarinet, the 18th-century version played in an extended treble register, and Mr. Neidich played with richness and transparency throughout all the ranges. The clarinet was still evolving as an instrument in the 1790s, and it was both entertaining and enlightening to see and hear as close to what the instrument might have been like as one can get in this century.

Mozart’s clarinet concerto dates from the last year of Mozart’s life, and in this work one could easily hear the lyricism of vocal duets from The Marriage of Figaro and the fiery coloratura of the Magic Flute’s “Queen of the Night” aria in the concerto’s three movements. As in Mozart’s most challenging vocal works, there were large intervallic skips and long melodic runs in the solo clarinet line, and Mr. Neidich handled all aspects of the concerto with ease. Playing with the orchestra at times and then breaking out for the solo lines, Mr. Neidich articulated cleanly and led the ensemble through both the drama and humor of the music. Teasing yet elegant cadenzas closed both the first and third movements, as Mr. Neidich drew out the poignant melodic lines and extended trills.

The Chamber Orchestra returned to Mozart later in the concert, but first turned their attention to an unusual work by a composer familiar with a number of genres. Jonny Greenwood made his career as lead guitarist and keyboard player of the band Radiohead, but maintained a parallel career as a composer of orchestral and film music. Greenwood scored the acclaimed films There will be Blood and The Master, and collaborated with Krzysztof Penderecki on the renowned Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima. Greenwood was commissioned by the Chamber Orchestra last year, and composed Water, a one-movement work for orchestra and the unusual twist of tanpura, an Indian string instrument. The overall musical effect of this piece was indeed that of water, with the violin sounding like raindrops. The tanpura, played by Vinod Prasanna, provided a drone to underpin the music, and added the exotic effect of running fingers around the edge of a glass filled with water. Even in string cacophony, the music of Water was accessible, in endless streams of color and sound.

The Australian Chamber Orchestra closed Thursday night’s program with a clean and quick performance of Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 in G minor. Playing with great direction in the melodic lines, the players brought out the “question and answer” aspects of Mozart’s spirited music, with the second movement played as a study in suspensions, resolutions, and graceful appoggiaturas. The Chamber Orchestra maintained a consistent Viennese lilt through all four movements, especially in the delicate Trio of the third movement. Throughout the symphony, the Australian Chamber Orchestra proved that it is a performing treasure from the Land Down Under, and one that may not be heard in Princeton that often.