Harpsichordist Caitlyn Koester is a perfect fit for the 18th-century instrument she’ll play at the Musica Angelica concert in downtown Long Beach
By Linda Chase
Before she began her semester-end piano performance at the University of Michigan, Caitlyn Koester was asked by her professor to show her hands to the assembled members of the music faculty. He intended to make them aware of the higher degree of difficulty that confronted her because of her small hand span.
Like basketball stars such as namesake Caitlin Clark, whose large hands make her a superior ball handler, pianists with large hands can more easily master devilishly difficult works such as the Rachmaninoff concertos. Rachmaninoff’s hands could span 14 notes; Koester’s can barely reach an eight-note octave.
Small hands and all, Koester made it through her recital. Afterward, she stared down at the reproachful black and white keys, then at her hands, wondering. “Who am I as a pianist?”
The answer came in the form of the harpsichord, a smaller keyboard instrument that was popular in the 15th through the 18th century when the piano was invented. The harpsichord is ideally suited to the music Koester will play with Musica Angelica in the Baroque ensemble’s concert on Sept. 21 at the First Congregational Church of Long Beach. The concert will be repeated the next day at the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles.
Some musicians might find the harpsichord’s five-octave keyboard and smaller dynamic range too confining. Not Koester. From her first experience playing it, she was enthralled by the instrument’s less-imposing size and the delicacy of touch and rich ornamentation that made the music come alive for her. “Why had no one told me about this before?” she wondered.
Unlike the piano, which makes notes through the percussive action of hammers, the harpsichord keys release a jack that plucks individual strings with a plectrum. Modern musicians have used its unique sound in such songs as “Scarborough Fair” by Simon and Garfunkel and “Monday Monday” by the Mamas and the Papas. The Beatles famously sped up a tape of a piano to make it sound like a harpsichord in their song “In My Life.” In Baroque compositions, it provides the basso continuo, the pulsebeat that is the signature of this style.
For Koester, it was love at first note. Though her harpsichord studies were only supposed to last for a semester, they ended up being the fulcrum for a thriving performance and teaching career. Her mentor, Joseph Gascho, instilled in her a passion for the instrument and its early-music repertoire. He admonished his protégée to stop playing Baroque music on the piano.
“It was amazing advice,” Caitlyn said. She found that with the harpsichord, she didn’t need big gestures and big hands to faithfully execute the music of Bach, Handel and Scarlatti. Instead, she drew on her fine motor skills and a deft touch to bring color and texture to the music.
Able to feel the plucking mechanism through the keys (referred to as being “on the string”), she releases the weight of the hand from the key, creating dynamic shadings that charge the music with energy and tension. She discovered that, far from being a boring repetition of phrases, basso continuo’s figured bass opened up the music to possibilities for improvisation that would excite a jazz musician.
After beginning her career in the Pacific Northwest, Caitlyn graduated from Juilliard’s Historical Performance program and taught at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Now residing in New York, she is pursuing a doctorate at the State University of New York at Stony Brook while maintaining an active concert schedule, sometimes performing with former Juilliard professors.
At the Musica Angelica concerts, which feature works by Baroque composers from Naples, Rome, Venice, and Milan, Koester will be playing an authentic replica of a Baroque harpsichord built by Los Angeles harpsichord maker and restorer Curtis Berak. Other musicians will also be playing either original instruments or meticulously crafted replicas.
Because the instruments are tuned as much as a half-tone lower than today’s instruments, audiences experience the mellower, more burnished sound that listeners heard in the 1700s. As Martin Haselböck, the musical director of Musica Angelica, once remarked, “It’s like stepping in a 300-year-old time machine.”
Koester will be pulling out all the stops in her harpsichord solos in pieces by Girolamo Frescobaldi and Domenico Scarlatti. In the late Renaissance, Frescobaldi introduced a new musical language, an imaginative contrapuntal style filled with complex rhythmic changes and improvisation. Koester quotes his famous injunction “not to leave the instrument empty,” which invites the performer to adorn the continuo with rich ornamentation.
Scarlatti, a prolific composer of the late Italian Baroque period, wrote nearly all of his 555 sonatas for keyboard. Innovative and often audacious, these exercises in technical skill and virtuosity have become staples of the repertoire for both harpsichordists and pianists.
Through subtle gestures and expressions, Koester will engage the other musicians in musical conversation to bring out the earthy, natural qualities of the works. “It will be an emotional journey,” she assures us, her hands instinctively reaching for the opening chords of this music that, for her, contains the roots of human expression.
Linda Chase is a freelance writer based in Santa Barbara. She writes on the arts, travel, lifestyle and other topics. This feature is produced by the Journalism Arts Initiative, which is underwritten by donations from arts organizations and others interested in supporting excellence in arts journalism.
INFO BOX
“Giro d’Italia: A Tour of Italy,” concert by Musica Angelica, Sept. 21 at 7:30 p.m. First Congregational Church of Long Beach, 241 Cedar Ave., Long Beach. Patrons are invited to a benefit reception before the concert beginning at 6:30 p.m.
The concert is repeated Sept. 22 at 3 p.m. First Congregational Church of Los Angeles, 540 S. Commonwealth Ave. Los Angeles. Following this concert, there will be a reception in the Mayflower Courtyard.
Tickets, $43.14 to $85.16, are available at https://www.musicaangelica.org/. Call 562-276-0865 for information.