Stockbridge — To close their harpsichord festival, the Berkshire Bach Society will present the second of two concerts on Saturday, October 19, featuring harpsichordists Caitlyn Koester and Elliot Figg performing a program titled “Skeletons of the Opera,” and it is all music you have never heard before in this format.
You don’t expect to hear new music at a harpsichord recital—unless it is presented by the Berkshire Bach Society. Last month, they gave us harpsichord music newly composed by Nicola Canzano and proved that new music written in this style is worth listening to.
If anyone in the world understands the harpsichord’s capacity for making rollicking music, it is Elliot Figg—because he is a member of the world’s only period-music rock band, Ruckus. Ruckus makes a Baroque hullabaloo wherever they go. You may remember the band from their performance at the Hudson Opera House of Handel’s “Rodelinda.”
Here is what Berkshire Bach Society Executive Director Terrill McDade had to say about this program:
Berkshire Bach is delighted to present our harpsichord recitalists in this special program of theatrical music. It’s an opportunity to hear these wonderful musicians play the music from arguably the most important invention of the Baroque era—opera—with all the drama, contrasts, and different humors that characterize theatre music of the period.
Saturday’s program is as follows:
- H. Purcell: “Dido and Aeneas”
- G.F. Handel: opera overtures
- E. Jacquet de La Guerre: selections
- J-B Lully: selections transcribed by D’Anglebert
I spoke with Caitlyn Koester a few days ago to get more details about Saturday’s program. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
EDGE
How did you and Elliot select the repertoire for this program?
KOESTER
As a duo, we’re very interested in creating new music for ourselves, specifically exploring four-hand repertoire. It’s something we don’t see other people doing at the harpsichord. Of course, there’s a very rich tradition of four-hand piano music. And I grew up really looking up to piano duos who were playing a lot of four-hand and two-piano music.
So it’s been really exciting for us to create our own four-hand arrangements at a dual-manual harpsichord, taking music from the Baroque period—largely for the harpsichord in some capacity—whether it’s as a continuo instrument or as a solo instrument, but then expand upon it, to fit four hands and, you know, a whole new palette of sounds.
EDGE
So these are your own arrangements? Everything you’re playing on the 19th was arranged by you and Elliot?
KOESTER
Yeah. For this concert, everything is our own arrangement, which has been really, really fun, really challenging. And, we’re proud of how we have taken these opera pieces, which are scored for a larger-scale ensemble, and found ways to represent the dynamic capacities of a larger ensemble and the the color changes that can exist within it. We think we’ve come up with ways that the harpsichord can achieve the same things through different means, like using different registration for the harpsichord, using the buff stop, and using the four-foot string, versus all the bells and whistles engaged at once.
And the opera repertoire that we’ve selected is representative of different styles of Baroque opera, as well. So it’s a good sampling of what Baroque opera could be—everything from Purcell’s “Dido and Aeneas” to Jacquet de la Guerre’s “C’est Follets Propri,” a work that is rarely performed and not very well known. Also, it’s the first opera by a female composer to be published in France and the first to be published during Jean-Baptiste Lully’s lifetime.
So it’s quite a variety of repertoire, I think, for a concert of just one, single harpsichord on stage.
EDGE
Anything else we should know about your program on the 19th?
KOESTER
Yes. Something that is important to us while while we’ve been creating these arrangements is showing the full capability of the instrument. We’re here to argue that one harpsichord can achieve many things musically and can create these very large sounds, can create something that’s kind of rhythmic and rollicking, can create something that’s very lyrical.
There’s a very romantic kind of heart-on-your-sleeve aria from the French opera that we’re doing, and, you know, this kind of plucking instrument is not always associated with something very lyrical. We argue that you can achieve something that sounds like a really percussive dance piece for an orchestra, or a really large-scale overture. So it’s been important to us to give the audience this kind of example of how the harpsichord can achieve so many things. Baroque music—or early music generally—is a living practice, and we can engage with it in new ways that are historically inspired.
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The Berkshire Bach Society concludes its harpsichord festival with the second of two concerts at Saint Paul’s Episcopal Church in Stockbridge on October 19, at 4 p.m. Tickets and more information are available here.
