Music Reviews : French Baroque Works at the Getty Museum

It is arguable that the major barrier to fully appreciating works of the French Baroque lies in separating the melodic line from its gaudy ornamentation. Most scholars insist that the two are inseparable, or even that the ornaments are the music.

These considerations may have provided solace to many attending Saturday’s French Baroque extravaganza at the J. Paul Getty Museum, part of the museum’s valuable “Music in the Age of Science and Reason” summer series.

For this listener, the indirectness of the music proved tough going for at least a third of the lengthy program, in spite of vigorous, polished presentations by a group of highly accomplished period-style practitioners.

After some, at best, uninsistent matter by Hotteterre, Mondonville and Forqueray, the evening blazed to life with the first of Rameau’s “Pieces de clavecin en concert,” music with depth and clarity to match its dazzle, played by harpsichordist Mark Kroll, violinist Carol Lieberman, flutist Kathleen Kraft--who coaxed astonishing variety of tone and dynamics from her seemingly restrictive single-keyed instrument--and viola da gamba player Martha McGaughey.

Harpsichordist Kroll continued the evening’s upward spiral by dexterously attending to the fanciful convolutions of the seventh “Ordre” of Francois Couperin.

And the program came to a heady conclusion with the second “Recreation de musique” of Jean-Marie Leclair: less a triumph of content over style than a perfect melding of the two. Here, Kroll, Lieberman and McGaughey were stylishly joined by violinist Gregory Maldonado.