One of popular music’s magnificent ruins, The Who, brought their long-lived rock to Walnut Creek Sunday for a multi-media performance of their epic 1973 “rock symphony,” “Quadrophenia.”

It might have been expected that “Quadrophenia” would become a period piece. Unlike 1969’s “Tommy,” guitarist-composer Pete Townshend’s other classic foray into concept rock to which it is inevitably compared, “Quadrophenia’s” story is rooted in a definite (long gone) place and time: England’s “mod” youth movement of the mid-1960s.

But “Quadrophenia” has actually aged better than its commercially more successful companion. “Tommy’s” hippie astral-mysticism seems quaint now and at times a little hard to take, while the hard-reality tale of a pill-popping mod Holden Caulfield type with a four-way split personality, dismissed as a well-intentioned failure when new, seems now like the work of an artist grown wise before his time.

This late incarnation of The Who, older but technically more accomplished than the rowdy instrument and eardrum smashers of the 1960s, backed themselves Sunday with a brass section, percussionists, accompanying vocalists and audio-visual representations. Beginning a bit perfunctorily, the show gained momentum with successive versions of “Cut My Hair,” “The Punk Meets the Godfather” and “I’m One,” the last featuring a ringing Townshend vocal.

After stubbing their toe on a strained “The Dirty Jobs” — Townshend’s brother, Simon, along for this tour on guitar, flubbed the lyrics in a vocal turn — The Who, old pros at this sort of thing, rebounded, handling with ease the morose/bombastic mood swings of “Is It In My Head?,” “I’ve Had Enough,” “5:15” (featuring an extended John Entwistle bass solo and lead singer Roger Daltrey’s strongest vocal of the evening), and “Sea and Sand.”

A stirring “Love, Reign O’er Me” closed “Quadrophenia,” followed by a mixed acoustic/electric encore of Who standards, including “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” “Substitute,” “Can’t Explain,” “The Kids Are Alright” and “Who Are You?” Daltrey’s steel-scorching tenor held up well, succumbing to customary late-tour fatigue only during the encore. Townshend and Entwistle maintained their post-“Tommy” instrumental virtuosity. Ringo Starr’s son Zak Starkey filled Keith Moon’s rotating empty chair on drums, attacking “Quadrophenia’s” difficult rhythms with verve and timing his old man never had.

Save for the occasional Townshend “windmill” or Daltrey mike-wire lariat, most of the histrionics have faded from The Who’s stage persona, a concession to age and, perhaps, the unseemliness of older rockers “pounding stages like a clown” (a line from “Punk Meets Godfather”). The sound is still forceful, controlled chaos, “chamber music during a commando raid,” as it has been described.

On Sunday, The Band That Got Old Before It Died gave their audience good reason to be glad it did.

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