BAROQUE FESTIVAL : ORGANIST LAGACE AT ST. MATTHEW’S

If Baroque means ornate, embellished, overblown, gilded and just a wee bit arrogant, then Bernard Lagace’s recital of music of the early French Baroque in St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in Pacific Palisades on Sunday night was a model of stylishness.

The 55-year-old organist, of Canadian birth and Continental training, brought clarity, boldness and a strong personality to a fascinating program. That agenda, closing concert in the E. Nakamichi/UCLA Baroque Festival, offered works by Jehan Titelouze, Francois Roberday, Nicolas de Grigny, Francois Couperin and Louis-Nicolas Clerambault. The single but bright encore was Andre Raison’s “Vive le Roi.”

Indeed, every item on this program proved bright, sometimes distressingly so.

Bravura, reediness, nasality, big climaxes and loud connecting passages marked the bulk of Lagace’s playing--all very convincing, dignified and often triumphant. If the repertory being played Sunday night on the year-old Fisk organ in the wonderfully woody and willfully asymmetrical sanctuary at St. Matthew’s is representative, then the genre is truly royal and leonine, gruff but elegant, energetic and edgy, quirky and elemental.

Not surprisingly then, the high points were achieved at the joints of the program, in bombastic and anger-venting climaxes of works by Grigny, Francois Couperin (“Le Grand”) and Clerambault. They would have seemed even more climactic had they been surrounded by less grandiose companion pieces.