Harpsichordist Igor Kipnis’ Fingers Dance From Bach to Brubeck

Ready for Duke Ellington on a harpsichord? Igor Kipnis is. The harpsichord virtuoso plans to play some Ellington--as well as some Brubeck and some Beatles--at the end of his classical recital Sunday afternoon in Fullerton. The recital, being sponsored by the Fullerton Friends of Music, will be free.

“It surprises a lot of people,” Kipnis said on the phone from Maine, “but jazz sounds extremely good on the harpsichord.” He had just finished playing some jazz, in fact, at a lunchtime concert in the cafeteria of the University of Maine, Portland-Gorham, where he had been in residence for 10 days.

“I was your basic cocktail harpsichordist,” he laughed. “I played Bach, the Beatles’ ‘Yesterday,’ rags, blues, as well as Elizabethan harpsichord music. . . .

“Some people were not paying any attention. It was just wallpaper to them. Others gathered around, listening. . . . There are a lot of people who don’t know a lot about classical music and, what is worse, don’t want to know. Somebody should make an effort to reach these people. I try.”

The son of Alexander Kipnis, the Russian-born Metropolitan Opera basso, the younger Kipnis has been trying to reach audiences since he made his harpsichord debut in 1959. He has given concerts around the world and has made 62 classical

recordings (40 of them solo albums) for which he has received six Grammy nominations. He was named Best Harpsichordist by Keyboard Magazine in 1978, 1979 and 1980.

He also was influential in leading the modern revival of interest in the fortepiano, the successor to the harpsichord and predecessor of the modern piano.

One instrument he steers away from is the modern piano, however.

“I’m afraid, with a modern piano, I’m like the old Charles Addams character on the beach who is getting sand kicked in his face by the local bully,” he said. “I cannot work my technique into the requirements of a modern piano. I don’t use my shoulders. I use the same finger technique, but the spacing (between keys) of a modern piano is so different.”

Kipnis said that in offering mixed repertory programs he is by no means abandoning the classical works upon which he built his reputation. “I have nothing against standard repertory,” he said. “I play, with enormous enjoyment, the Elizabethan composers, the French composers, the meat-and-potatoes school, Bach and Scarlatti. . . .

“But the average person who doesn’t know all that much about classical music may enjoy a little bit of Bach from time to time but is interested in other areas of music, not necessarily classical music. That is one of the reasons I’m getting involved more in contemporary music, in all senses, not just classical.

“These pieces are also a great deal of fun.”

Kipnis said he would not play jazz or popular pieces on an all-Bach program because “I don’t think that that would be very appropriate. But if it were a mixed program, I don’t see why not. I think you can lose audiences by being too up-tight.”

Kipnis will start his Sunday recital with music by Bach, Soler and J. G. Goldberg. “I’m playing the ‘Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue’--your standard Bach blockbuster,” he said. Also on the program will be Soler’s “Fandango,” which he described as “the closest piece to Ravel’s ‘Bolero’ that you can get. It’s an incredibly colorful fiesta.”

What most concerns Kipnis, however, is not programming but audience expectations about the size or volume of the harpsichord’s sound.

“A lot of people know these instruments by recordings, which are beautifully balanced and sound absolutely wonderful,” he said. “Then they hear them live, very often in a hall which is antiseptic or mitigates against the real glory of the sound of those instruments. And at that point, you’re working with several strikes against you.

“People don’t feel like making the effort (to listen). They just want to crank up the volume--and there is no volume to crank up. That is one of the hassles you have to worry about.”

During his long career, Kipnis has seen interest in Baroque harpsichord music grow to the point of lively debate about what constitutes authentic performance practices of the Baroque period. He regards these issues from a performer’s, not a scholar’s, point of view.

“I do pay enormous attention to performance practice (issues),” he said. “You have to. That is part of the business. If I were a doctor, I would have to know the latest findings in medical research. But if I were treating a patient, I would like to have a nice bedside manner. . . .

“I like performance. I don’t like dead music. The paramount thing is the performance.

“Everything seems to be so much a reaction to a reaction. One generation to another, something is a reaction to something which was a reaction to a previous reaction. Music is in a state of flux. We are always trying to find the musical (Holy) Grail, which always eludes us, or there is a new set of directions on how to find the Grail.”

“I think of the harpsichord as a living instrument, not something relegated to the attic and attic-kind of material,” said Kipnis, who, because he wants to ensure the instrument a future as well as a past, has commissioned new works from such contemporary composers as Ned Rorem, George Rochberg and Barbara Kolb.

“My attitude is that it is necessary to have some 20th-Century music to play, mainly because I don’t like having things put into their little niches. . . . I like the idea of propagating the instrument and making it more popular. I’d like to be remembered as a proselytizer.”

Igor Kipnis will play Sunday at 3:30 p.m. at Sunny Hills High School, 1801 Warburton Way, Fullerton. Sponsored by the Fullerton Friends of Music. Admission: free. Information: (714) 525-5836.