Harpsichordist Lillian Gordis Opens Five Cities Baroque Festival with All-Bach Recital

Hailed by ResMusica as the “Martha Argerich of the harpsichord,” Lillian Gordis is one of the world’s preeminent harpsichordists. Born into a family of scholars and mathematicians in Berkeley, California, Lillian fell in love with the harpsichord at age 9 and never looked back. When French harpsichordist and conductor Pierre Hantaï discovered her during a tour to the United States, he encouraged her to come to France for further studies. Lillian moved to Paris at 16, where she was mentored by Hantaï and Bertrand Cuiller.

Now a dual French and American citizen, Lillian regularly performs as a soloist in festivals across Europe and the United States and plays frequently in a duo with Jérôme Hantaï, a viola da gamba player and fortepianist. Her latest album, a double-disc dedicated to Bach (Paraty Productions, 2022), was awarded a Diapason d’Or and has received widespread critical acclaim. Lillian’s next solo album, a second volume of Bach’s keyboard works, will appear in early 2025.

This month, she opens the 2024 Five Cities Baroque Festival with a recital at the Chapel of St. John the Divine in Champaign at 4 p.m. on Sunday, June 16. Read on to learn more about Lillian and her all-Bach program, which will feature works from her upcoming album.

KB: What drew you to the harpsichord initially?

LG: It was the very organic feeling of the touch. I have a very early memory of this incredible magnetic pull between my fingertips and the string itself. In the sensorial world of a child, these instincts are so essential. By the time I was nine, I had been around harpsichords for a while. My very first piano teacher had a harpsichord, so the instrument was always on my radar and something I was immediately attracted to. It took a few years to find a teacher and an instrument, but I made that switch quite early.

Of course, beyond that, I was obsessed with Bach from the very beginning yet struggled with playing him on the piano—playing one voice louder than others in polyphony never totally made sense to me, but I couldn’t articulate why. When I started playing harpsichord full-time, everything came into focus.

And I think even at that age, I was interested in the early music movement as a challenge to the hierarchy and institutions of classical music, which I was quite allergic to. I liked an environment where I was encouraged to ask questions, even if there were no answers.

KB: What was it like moving to Paris at age 16? Do you think you could have received the same level of training in the United States, or was studying in Europe necessary for what you wanted to do?

LG: It was an insane thing to do! I don’t think I was very conscious of how crazy that was until many years later. I was coming from this fairytale homeschooled childhood in California, and landed on my own, smack in the middle of the ubiquitous European early music scene drama, with no apartment and only the vague outlines of a plan. It was very disorienting and challenging, but I also dived in head first and adapted and progressed really quickly. It was ultimately a tremendously enriching and character-building experience. I don’t think I could have reached that same level of training in the US at that point for a variety of different reasons. It is important to remember that the early music scene in the US suffers from being so disparate because of simple issues of geography as well as cultural politics. It has historically been difficult for us to develop a comparably elite playing field to the one in Europe for that reason, and it is still a challenge we face today—one I hope to contribute to alleviating.

In Europe, I had access to a greater variety of instruments, antiques and copies, which teach us so much; I could play with a lot of different people from all over who were all focused on specializing in historical performance, which remains a rarity in the US for young people; and I had the opportunity to be mentored by some truly top-level performers, whose experience, not just as pedagogues but also as touring soloists, helped forge my knowledge of how to handle those specific challenges. Without the structure of an American college, I ended up navigating in and out of the conservatory system (which I did find a bit stifling at times) and had the freedom to pursue apprenticeships that encouraged independence. I was also given a lot of freedom to learn how to regulate my own practicing, my interpretative choices and my path as a musician.

KB: You have just wrapped up a year as Visiting Assistant Professor of Harpsichord at Oberlin Conservatory. Can you tell us more about what that entailed and what the experience was like?

LG: It was an amazing experience! I, of course, have been hearing about Oberlin for something like 20 years, and I have many friends who attended, so I felt very lucky to be part of that history for a year. I was mainly teaching harpsichord, continuo, and coaching baroque ensembles. Mark Edwards, the professor who invited me during his sabbatical, kindly encouraged me to experiment and challenge the students. So I tried to set myself certain goals before I arrived: I was really interested in pushing the students to take on difficult repertoire from our canon—a goal I had set for myself when I was a student—and was very confident they would rise to the challenge. And they did! Their work ethic and curiosity meant that they unknowingly checked off many more objectives that I had even hoped to cover with them.

I was delighted at how motivated, curious, kind, and talented they all were, and they truly welcomed me with open arms. It was also incredibly interesting for me to face young musicians for the first time and learn how to make suggestions without inadvertently forcing my personal vision on them. My goal was that none of them would imitate me, and I felt that they all grew their personal voices without falling into the trap of pure imitation. So much of teaching performance is finding the balance between setting high standards and lending an empathetic ear, and I hope I was able to provide some of that. I was also thrilled to watch their personalities grow and change as they opened up to me and grew as people throughout the year. They had astute opinions, interesting ideas and were wonderful interlocutors with whom I could discuss the challenges of both our industry and our world.

I am very grateful for the kindness and enthusiasm I encountered, and I found it inspiring to meet such interesting and talented individuals in the next generation.

KB: Next fall you will be teaching harpsichord and directing the Baroque ensemble as the Eaton Chair of Baroque Music at CU Boulder. How will that impact your performing schedule, and will you still maintain a residence in Paris?

LG: Yes, I am very excited and honored to have been named for this position and I hope to really build the program into a full department and begin recruiting students to come work with me starting in Fall 2025. My experience at Oberlin was a wonderful intro into this world, and I feel tremendous responsibility and enthusiasm about creating a high-level program that will attract musicians from around the world. Having just entered my 30s, I do think that it is incredibly important to start giving back and passing on the knowledge I have begun to accumulate to up-and-coming talents—who will also be wonderful future colleagues that I am looking forward to working with for many years to come. Contributing to boosting their progress is essential for the health of the whole community.

An endowed chair in Baroque music and harpsichord is extremely rare in our field, and I believe that it is a great opportunity to build a full department down the line and import some of the performance standards that exist in Europe. I want to build bridges between the continents and establish more exchange; there was a real US–Europe corridor at the height of the early music movement’s popularity between the 1970s and 1990s, and that nourished some of the most interesting and pioneering performance and research. That has been steadily dropping off in the last 20 years or so. There is a ton of untapped potential with this endowed position at CU Boulder, as well as an early music scene to build almost from scratch in Colorado and the Western United States, and to bring people back and forth between the US and Europe much more frequently to both teach and perform.

I will be maintaining my performance schedule internationally; it is not only part of the job description but also the best way to remain relevant and interesting in my teaching. And I will continue to maintain my home in Paris (I am a French citizen now) and split my time between the US and France. It will certainly be demanding and tiring, but I thrive on challenges—otherwise, I probably wouldn’t have become a performer. I am looking forward to finding just the right balance.

KB: How did you come to be involved in the Five Cities Baroque Festival?

LG: Through mutual friends. I wanted to perform in the Midwest while I was at Oberlin and, through several connections, I came to know about the festival, which I was really excited to discover. It is a great initiative and exactly the type of project that I hope will keep cropping up around the US. I am really happy to be able to participate in this second edition and support the festival.

KB: What instrument will you be playing? Do you travel with your own harpsichord, or will you be borrowing one locally?

LG: Most of the time the organization will provide one that they source, either through renting or borrowing. In this case, the festival is using an instrument from the university: a French double-manual instrument by Dowd. Not necessarily ideal for the repertoire, but usually a solid and reliable option. My own harpsichord is in Paris, and I use it often for recordings and sometimes for recitals in the area, but it is not always practical to move. I am quite used to playing on many different instruments, which have much more variety than pianos. Keyboard sizes and layouts, compass, registration, regulation, etc. all differ vastly. It is a much bigger adjustment than for the modern piano, which people don’t always realize. Sometimes there are bad surprises and the harpsichord doesn’t work, or I just don’t connect with the instrument, but that is part of the journey. On the other hand, I also sometimes discover a magical instrument this way.

I have ended up working really differently during my preparation time to allow for this; rather than mostly working off muscle memory, I try to use brain and listening memory so that I can physically adjust as fast as possible to new instruments while still building a new and interesting interpretation for every concert. Something I think is very important is allowing every concert to be a new interpretation of the works I am playing—listening to the room and the harpsichord and letting yourself be surprised along the way. Of course, you have to feel extremely comfortable with the music and prepared to take this risk, but I really believe that is what the moment of live performance is for.

KB: Can you tell us about your program and the significance of your selections? I understand they come from an upcoming album of Bach centered on the theme of the number 6.

LG: My program highlights the Partita 6, a piece I have been playing for over 15 years. I got completely lost in it as a teenager and then burned out badly on it (a youthful error…). I was finally able to look at it again at the end of 2022 and was ready to program and eventually record it. I wanted to juxtapose it with another of Bach’s monumental suites, the 6th English Suite. For the album, the idea is to explore the setting of the recording to highlight individual works by Bach that tend to be recorded as part of a collection. By designing a standalone recording program, I hope that listeners will have the freedom to experience the music differently, with less pressure perhaps. For any album, it is important to consider both the listener experience and your own personal longevity with the pieces—the preparation for a recording, the session itself, the editing afterwards, and the numerous concerts that go along with that mean that picking pieces you can live and grow with for a long period of time is crucial.

The number 6 is quite important for Bach, and while I usually prefer to avoid overanalyzing the numerical significance in his works, I do think the sixth and last suite of each set is often the most notable in a variety of different ways. So, I had this idea of working around the number 6. Following my approach for my last Bach album, I wanted to record more preludes and fugues excerpted from the Well-Tempered Clavier Book II. I find that the individuality of each one of these pieces has more room for expression when they are taken out of the familiar context of the complete set. Spending a lot of time with the A-flat major and G-sharp minor pair appealed to me because I am fascinated by the enharmonic aspect of keyboard repertoire. From there it was a question of constructing a balance of moods and key transitions that work. The final selection has six preludes and fugues—to match the theme—that move from B major to F major with an enharmonic transition. The progression moves through the E major triad (B, G#, E), and back up a major third using an enharmonic transition (G# to A-flat), and then up a minor third, and finally down a perfect fifth to arrive in F major, the relative key for the 6th English Suite. And this way the whole album moves you from E minor to D minor…using the scenic route, one might say!

The full CD program is a bit too long for a solo recital, so I have excerpted four preludes and fugues and the Partita for the moment. This will doubtless change in the next seasons, but I am enjoying exploring how much the pieces evolve concert to concert and am looking forward to continuing that adventure for my summer tour.

KB: What are some of the challenges and rewards of playing Bach in comparison to other composers in your repertoire?

LG: For me, I really do think that Bach’s music is probably the best out there. In terms of sheer compositional technique, variety within the repertoire, and emotional impact…there is nothing more powerful.

The biggest reward for me is when I manage to achieve this kind of trance-like state where I am able to simultaneously hear all the voices I am playing and there is a multidimensional aspect to this music that I am attempting to play with just two hands. That is a unique experience that I don’t really have with other composers.

Scarlatti has some incredibly difficult technical passages, French repertoire requires a very intuitive understanding of ornamentation and pacing, early 17th-century repertoire demands a deeper knowledge of pre-Baroque practices, but I think that Bach is very much a style thief and manages to imbue all those different influences into his own personal style, with his trademark difficulties as well.

Nothing Bach writes is ever “non-contrapuntal,” and so the challenge of course is how taxing it is first on the brain to truly hear and process all of the content, and then to transmit that to the hands while continuing to consciously track all the nuances in real-time. Harpsichord playing requires a huge amount of control, with these tiny micro-movements of timing and attack that create a dynamic palette. We have very little margin on the keyboard itself because the touch is quite light. With Bach’s music being so well-crafted and detailed, it requires an even higher level of control and composure to render tangible all those elements. As a performer, it requires a certain level of acceptance that with Bach, playing the notes themselves is already the interpretative gesture, and that can be borderline antithetical to the ethos of the performing experience, but I find that challenge incredibly satisfying. 

KB: One of the Festival’s goals is to expand access to early music by offering free admission to each of the concerts. For audience members who might never have attended a harpsichord recital before, what do you hope they take away from the experience?

LG: I hope that people feel welcome and, most importantly, know that there is no pressure to experience such an event any one way. You don’t need to know or understand the repertoire or the instrument as long as you come in ready to listen. It is my job as the performer to bring you into the sound world and guide you through it, and it is my goal that more people will be open to simply savoring that experience without feeling an obligation to be “educated.” Audiences can expect to hear an instrument that has wonderful colors and repertoire that is deeply enveloping, and each person’s individual understanding is more than sufficient to validate their participation. I hope that people will remember that every audience member’s presence is a gift to me because without them, the live moment doesn’t exist—and I am tremendously grateful to each and every person!