30 | OCTOBER 15 • 2020 

Arts&Life

music

Goes
 Chamber 
 
 
Music
Virtual

Harpsichordist Andrew Appel 
to play free online concert.

SUZANNE CHESSLER 
CONTRIBUTING WRITER

A

ndrew Appel was 16 when he was 
able to bring a harpsichord into 
his New York City home while 
preparing for a career as a musician. 
Now, at 69, and with the use of 
technology, he virtually is able to bring 
lots of guests into his home, 100 miles 
outside New York City, to hear him at 
the instrument that became his favorite 
as both soloist and member of the Four 
Nations Ensemble.
Appel’
s next concert — free and 
beginning at 8 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 
15 — is planned as part of a series by 
the Chamber Music Society of Detroit 
(CMSD) as the organization, like so 
many other music presenters, has moved 
into the digital sphere because of the 
pandemic. 
Appel will feature five works by 
17th- and 18th-century French and 
German composers and speak about 
each piece before playing it. The first two 
pieces, by Louis Couperin and Johann 
Jakob Froberger, offer varied personal 
expressions related to a stunning shared 
experience.

“Couperin and Froberger were at a 
party, and a famous lutenist fell down a 
flight of steps and died,” Appel said. “Both 
composers [separately] wrote elegies in 
the lutenist’
s honor, and both pieces are 
really beautiful. It’
s so interesting to have 
the pieces side by side.”
The rest of the hourlong program 
features suites that have their individual 
stories, which will be conveyed by the 
harpsichordist. The works are by Georg 
Böhm, J.C.F. Fischer and J.S. Bach. The 
performer will delve into how Böhm 
brings the sweet and lyrical expression of 

French composers into his writing while 
Fischer is more contemporary. 
“I picked these pieces because I really 
love them,” said Appel, who explained 
that he came to love the harpsichord 
because it has a more complex sound 
than the piano, which he studied first.
“The harpsichord is more complicated 
and brain-filling. On the piano, you never 
feel the string. On the harpsichord, I 
actually feel the plucking of the string 
with every note, and my connection to 
the sound is a little more like a guitarist’
s 
connection to the sound.”
Before being able to have his own 
harpsichord as a teenager, Appel put 
thumb tacks on the hammers of his piano 
to create a metallic sound that brought 
the effect of the piano closer to the 
harpsichord. 
Appel’
s interest in classical music 
started when he was a preschooler who 
enjoyed listening to his mother’
s record 
collection. In school, he worked at his 
grandfather’
s garment business for the 
money to buy records of his own.
Appel, who had formal training at 

DAVID RODGERS

DAVID RODGERS

Andrew Appel at 
the harpsichord.

It’s almost as if 
listeners are sitting 
with me in the room 
... They’ll be much 
closer to the music.

— ANDREW APPEL

