Tatjana Vorobjova’s harpsichord recital in Gloucester Friday evening was a gem. That is an observation as much as a personal opinion, for an audience of 60 or so people sat, silent and to all appearances spellbound, for 75 minutes on the Annisquam Village Church’s uncushioned pews, listening to music few of them can have known performed by a player none of them (this reviewer included) had ever heard of.

Born and raised in Latvia and currently a working musician in Cologne, Vorobjova has developed a distinctive style. To say she combines the best features of the last several generations of harpsichordists would be lazy, though not inaccurate. On Friday her playing had ample spontaneity while never lacking pulse and momentum, ample virtuosity without ever seeming showy, the firmness and clarity of voice that a concert hall would demand yet the indrawing intimacy one usually finds only in house concerts.

It was fun to hear an entire program where Bach, so often the earliest composer, was instead the new kid on the block. François Couperin was 18 when Bach was born, Johann Krieger 34, Dieterich Buxtehude 48, Henri d’Anglebert 66; Louis Couperin and Johann Jacob Froberger had come and gone, as had Pieter Cornet, having been born an entire 110 years earlier. Coming near the end of this program, and being represented by the singular Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, BWV 903, Bach did indeed sound new, the Elvis or the Jerry Lee Lewis to the earlier Benny Goodmans and Glenn Millers.

In the company of the preludes, dances and character pieces of the earlier composers, the impact of the scale and ambition of the Bach arrived viscerally, not merely as historical information. Vorobjova highlighted this by playing the fantasy not as a sort of sequence of improvisatory ideas and explorations, but as a cogent unit. Where many performers treat the Fantasy as a continual fireworks display (which can indeed be exciting) and power through the central passages with only slightly less intensity, Vorobjova played those passages entirely on the quieter second manual, and set them off with slight pauses before and after. This was not just a change in color and mood but a perceptive comment on structure. The uneven distances between the notes of the chromatic fugue subject, the result of the use of an unequal temperament (in this case Kellner, a temperament often used for Bach) reminded one of how important an expressive element is missing when this piece is played in equal temperament.

Brave is the soul who follows one of Bach’s most dazzling works with a quiet piece by Froberger to cap off the program. Froberger left a sizable body of work, and harpsichordists draw from it often, yet to play it convincingly — to make it speak — is a rare gift. Vorobjova has it, as she showed earlier in a set with his four-movement Suite II in d minor plus the “Memento Mori Froberger,” and again in this final piece, a lament on the death of emperor Ferdinand IV, which ends with the trailing off of a slow, simple ascending major scale: dead easy to play, painfully difficult to make persuasive and attention-grabbing, though, as she showed, entirely possible.

Both the Bach and the works that preceded it (chronologically and in program order) make use of the sort of flowery flourishes that mark, in particular, the French harpsichord tradition. The Froberger suite as well as one from Buxtehude (in e minor, BuxWV 235, a most impressive work), each with French movement titles and mannerisms, were tangible indications of which country was considered the leader in harpsichord writing in the 17^th century and into the 18^th). These works, and the actual French ones from the two Couperins (one unmeasured prelude from Louis and five pieces from François), responded wonderfully to Vorobjova’s touch, sounding both fresh and thoughtful, free-spirited yet nicely self-possessed. For an encore, Vorobjova played a transcription of her own of the adagio from Bach’s Toccata, Adagio and Fugue for organ, BWV 564.

The harpsichord, born in the Renaissance and pronounced dead with the French Revolution, was famously reborn in Boston in the mid-20^th century. (The actual history is a bit more complicated: Carl Friedrich Zelter kept the flame alive into the Bach revival of the 1830s, and Pleyel and especially the more historically curious Dolmetsch were already at work in the 1880s and 1890s respectively, though the capsule version accurately reflects the rises and falls of general popularity.) The instrument Vorobjova played, a home-sized (as opposed to concert hall sized) Flemish double, was built by an exponent of that mid-20^th century movement, Jeremy Adams. Now retired and in his 80s, Adams lives in Gloucester and was present at the recital. This instrument and two others of this, both pipe organs, are resident in the church.

This instrument is notably beautiful, and quite capable of rendering the music of different eras and nationalities persuasively. One test of a harpsichord is whether you find yourself growing tired of it after half an hour or so of listening. No problem with that here. The sound has sweetness and it has vinegar, but just enough of each. It doesn’t strut, it sings.

This was Vorobjova’s first visit to the US, part of a modest tour that included several other performances — all in Maine — that was set up by Kevin Birch, an organist and harpsichordist on the faculty of the University of Maine. It would be wonderful if she can return, for, among other things, she is an effective advocate for an instrument and a repertoire that have rarely had enough of them.

A music reviewer for the Herald from 1985 to 1995 and a contributor to Hudson Review, Josiah Fisk studied chamber music performance with Leon Kirchner and has been a member of the MIT Symphony, Cape Ann Symphony, Oregon Symphony, Symphony by the Sea, and the Cape Ann Brass Quintet. He is the editor of the anthology Composers on Music (Northeastern University Press, 1997).