JOYCE Lindorff is a harpsichordist who enjoys making connections and extending frontiers. Indeed, her splendid Government House recital on Wednesday night was one which elegantly linked such commonly opposed polarities as old and new, East and West, solo and ensemble.
The curtain opened on this cleverly-devised programme with a welcome tercentenary tribute to Henry Purcell. Joyce Lindorff delighted us all with a sensitive and subtle reading of his Suite No. 6 in D, neatly and sensibly rounded out for the occasion by the addition of several movements from the composer's theatre music.
Those of us who cannot hear enough of Saint Sebastian, as Wesley dubbed him, were then treated to insightful performances of J.S. Bach's Aria with Variations in the Italian style (BWV 989) and the rarely-heard Adagio in G (BWV 968).
Caviar is, of course, always welcome and to follow it with a Hong Kong premiere by Ronald Caltabiano was a deft stroke of programming.
His Fanfares (for a new harpsichord) was written for Joyce Lindorff and, one imagines, was composed with her beautifully-decorated harpsichord in mind. The kaleidoscopic colours of its central Decisivo movement and the dazzling scale-figures and massive chords of its Declamando finale revealed some of the harpsichord's most unsuspected timbral landscapes.
The beautifully-realised Prelude of Jean-Henri D'Anglebert's Suite No. 2 in G Minor brought us back to the Baroque and the refined French court of the 17th century.