“Are people still writing concertos for harpsichord?” you ask. Well, even if it’s not the most pressing question that has sprung into your mind today, we do have an answer, which is “Yes!”

On today’s date in 2002, for example, this new Concerto for Harpsichord and Chamber Orchestra by Philip Glass had its premiere performance at Benaroya Hall in Seattle.

Glass was asked to write a new Harpsichord Concerto for the Northwest Chamber Orchestra, and found the commission intriguing.

“For one,” wrote Glass, “I have always been an admirer of the literature for harpsichord and studied some of the music from the Baroque period quite thoroughly, and have played a bit of that music myself. Secondly, I knew that the modern day harpsichord was capable of a fuller, more robust sound than was available in ‘period’ instruments and might make a handsome partner to a modern chamber orchestra.”

Glass’s modern day concerto is in the traditional three movements of a Baroque era concerto, with a slower, more lyrical middle movement flanked by speedier, flashier outer movements. And perhaps surprisingly for a “minimalist” composer famous—or infamous—for his loping, seemingly endless repeated patterns, this Harpsichord Concerto, despite being recognizably a work by Philip Glass, is more varied and mercurial than usual, with a final movement in which the harpsichord soloist really needs to “go for Baroque!”