Flûte Enchantée – not Mozart’s, but Barthold Kuijken and his baroque flutes transported to Indiana nearly a decade ago and to startling effect. With period performance burgeoning in America’s mid-west – both in Bloomington at the Early Music Institute and at the University of Indianapolis also promoting early music – a fledgeling Indiana Baroque Orchestra (affectionately Indy Baroque) is flourishing… And never more so than with the arrival of Barthold Kuijken from Belgium speaking as ‘his native tongue’ the musical language of Lully and Rameau.

And the lilt of his insistent Franco-flemish tones inspires more different kinds of ornaments – from flutes to bassoons – than one would believe imaginable…let alone executable…. as at the first session when Bart handed out a little explanation of ten different mordents, which glide off his flute-like variants of the five tones in Mandarin… But could others replicate his nuance?

Though there’s no competition with such a master wizard and his ‘wood-wind’… so simple: a black, hollowed-out transverse column of vibrating air with its little holes, the largest of which ‘is about embouchure’…yet from such guileless simplicity, such ineffable beauty! And, as the solo flute appears in a session, the pleasure of a concerto emerges: the baroque flute always enticing with its keyless liquidity – its breath that can whisper, float and soar – and if it pleases race faster than any other instrument in captivity (except perhaps a Dutch recorder player in a wild contemporary flurry…).

And the repertory: the giants – Lully and Rameau – such unique voices in the baroque, so distinctively French, challenging their more familiar, accessible Italian and German counterparts, making it all the more extraordinary to think that Bach, Handel and Rameau are near-exact contemporaries. Though Rameau always feels closer to Stravinsky in his bold gestures…

Three CDs are released with another to follow in 2026.

Listen here – The Versailles Revolution

Listen here – The Grand Mogul

Listen here – The Lully Effect