MUSIC REVIEW : ‘LES GOUTS REUNIS’ AT UCLA BAROQUE FESTIVAL

The E. Nakamichi Baroque Music Festival, sponsored by the Department of Music at UCLA, arrived at its fifth major event with a program titled “Les Gouts Reunis” in Schoenberg Hall Friday night.

Since the handsome souvenir program was lamentably short of translations and other essential information, it must be explained that “Les Gouts Reunis” is a title of a set of chamber music pieces by Francois Couperin (“Le Grand”), the purpose of which was to reconcile the divergent techniques of French and Italian composers, a matter of great concern in early 18th-Century Paris. The title means “The Reunited Tastes,” which appropriately ties in with the Festival theme of “Venice and Versailles.”

To illustrate the idea, the program collected contrasted works composed between 1610 and 1741, mainly in the classical form of trio sonatas, by the Italian composers Cima, Castello, Rossi, Corelli and Vivaldi, and the French composers Rameau, Marais and Couperin.

It was an observance designed by specialists, performed by specialists and heard by a large unspecialized audience that was consistently vociferous in approval.

The four performers--Stanley Ritchie, Daniel Stepner, violins; Laura Jeppesen, viola da gamba, and Elisabeth Wright, harpsichord--played with assured authority and with what could be accepted as scholarly authenticity.

The musicians had mastered the peculiarities of their instruments, performed with skillful interplay and produced agreeable sounds from their Baroque instruments.

The audience received an excellent accounting of performance practices and the development of music within the narrow area explored. The players did not overtly strive for “expression,” but everything they did could be viewed as expressive in one way or another.

A lofty type of professionalism was put at the service of music whose syntax is dated and unfamiliar, but which can still charm and entertain.