WEEKEND REVIEWS : Music : L.A. Baroque at Ford Theater

We should be sufficiently aware of the accomplishments of Gregory Maldonado’s nearly decade-old L.A. Baroque (a.k.a. Los Angeles Baroque Orchestra) not to have to judge its skills afresh at the period band’s every appearance.

The ensemble has proven its point over the years: that Southern California needs such a group and that these people are capable of doing their thing exceedingly well.

L.A. Baroque’s appearance at the Ford Amphitheatre on Saturday, with barely an evening breeze to dispel the lingering sultriness of the day, enhanced respect for the group’s professionalism.

Given the weather’s effect on intonation, the concert proved remarkable for a relative paucity of sour notes. Tuning was frequent but unobtrusively carried out--somewhat of an art itself.

If the ensemble was scrappier than usual, there was compensating spiritedness and individual achievement in familiar works by J. S. Bach, his Fourth and Fifth “Brandenburg” Concertos, the quasi-interminable Ouverture from Telemann’s first book of “Tafelmusik” and the irrepressible Pachelbel Canon, for once sounding like Baroque music and with its accompanying Gigue (which never made it to the charts) intact.

Much of the program rested on the broad shoulders and tireless chops of Kim Pineda, the group’s resident virtuoso on transverse flute and recorder, who was joined in the Telemann and Fourth “Brandenburg” by the hardly less fluent flutings of Janet Beazley.

Amplification, which was considerable, ceased being a problem once the ear became somewhat accustomed to the distortions wrought on the harpsichord--played as ever with commanding stylishness by Edward Murray.