This week’s St. Paul Chamber Orchestra program includes works from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. But heard Thursday at Trinity Lutheran Church in Stillwater, it sounded more like music from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. The chameleon piece was a world premiere, a cantata for soprano, “Sine Nomine for All Saints Day,” by SPCO principal keyboardist Layton James.

The sequence of recitatives and da capo arias sounded like it might have been a rediscovered work of one of Bach’s lesser progeny. James is unabashed about being a Baroque composer. He does not even try to bring a contemporary perspective to the 18th-century traditions, but merely seeks to replicate the style. The results were pleasant and accessible, but faceless, a pale copy of more masterful originals.

The florid writing and high tessitura held no terrors for soprano Maria Jette, though some low-lying passages strained her. But her technical mastery, exemplary diction and dramatic flair breathed life into the work. After the jubilant cantata, Richard Strauss’s “Metamorphosen” seemed all the more somber. Written in 1944 in response to the destruction of German culture, both from Hitler’s edicts and Allied bombing, it is dark and introspective.

Subtitled “A Study for 23 Solo Strings,” it’s structured like an expanded piece of chamber music. The work is melodic. Strauss is masterful in the abundance of textures he finds in the 10 violins, five violas, five cellos and three basses. But the complexity of the orchestration ultimately made it sound monochromatic. Conductor Scott Yoo led a performance of great delicacy, exposing all the instrumental variety without stinting the work’s moroseness.