SMALL ORCHESTRA FOR BACH CONCERT

Audiences needn’t be disturbed when they sit down for this weekend’s San Diego Symphony Orchestra concert and see a harpsichord and only 22 musicians on stage. It is not an austerity measure.

The orchestra’s size has been reduced to accommodate the Bach Violin Concerto No. 2 in E Major. The shrunken symphony is in keeping with the number of musicians Bach had at his disposal. The orchestra also will play without a conductor in the concerts tonight through Sunday. Andres Cardenes, the symphony’s concertmaster, will direct as soloist, in a manner similar to the music-making of the Baroque period. But Cardenes says this will not be an authentic re-creation of a Baroque concert.

“It’s very difficult to play in the original style,” Cardenes said. “We don’t have the instruments. The violin necks and fingerboards were shorter, and the bows were curved in the opposite direction that they are now. To say people are playing in a traditional manner, that is purely rhetoric, unless they have instruments in the style of the period. But we will try to stay dedicated to the original intentions, as much as possible.”

Part of keeping those original intentions is the use of a harpsichord continuo. An artifact from the Baroque era--circa 1600-1750--the continuo, actually basso continuo or figured bass, is much like a precursor of the woodwind section of a Big Band. It provides a steady rhythm while the soloist soars with the melody.

The continuo section was composed most often of cello and harpsichord or organ. The symphony’s harpsichordist is Hollace Koman, a free-lance musician who plays when the orchestra needs unusual keyboard sounds.

Like other successful free-lance musicians--those worth their sforzandos and pizzicatos--Koman learned early in her career to keep her options open. A free-lancer in San Diego who only plays one kind of music could be courting starvation. But if one is blessed with several talents, like Koman, all the better.

As a keyboardist, accompanist and conductor, Koman, 40, can tinkle away at a replica of an 18th-Century clavichord, boom the swelling accompaniment to “Tomorrow” from “Annie” on a DX-9 synthesizer or conduct a small orchestra for a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta.

Free-lancing, however, has its highs and lows. “It’s a precarious life. You cool your heels for a while and all of a sudden you run like mad,” said Koman, a Virginia native. This summer she was running, playing two synthesizers, piano and celesta in back-to-back productions of “I Do, I Do” and “Annie” at the Lawrence Welk Village Theater. It was all she could do to squeeze in her weekly commitments as organist and choirmaster at Pacific Beach Presbyterian Church.

Last month she conducted “The Pirates of Penzance” for the San Diego Gilbert and Sullivan Company, which she co-founded six years ago. This week it’s back to Bach, a favorite of hers.

While Cardenes solos in the violin concerto, Koman--out of the limelight--will tend to the drudgery of the continuo, the Baroque rhythm section. But this harpsichordist doesn’t see it as drudgery. “No, it’s fun. It’s like being the heartbeat,” she said. “The continuo player has a great possibility, well, for good or evil. You can square it away by being precise and clear . . . or really mess it up.”

The music for the continuo keyboardist originally was only indicated by numbers--figured--above or below the bass line of music. “The numbers represented chords,” Koman said. “The keyboardists could read this figured bass. It was part of their education.”

Although the continuo serves a functional purpose, it has room for creativity. “I can play a very dry and spare accompaniment or embellish, depending on the conductor’s preference.”

The continuo music is now frequently published separately. For the Bach concerto she will play from “a suggested realization” of the original figuration. “I may use some of it, or leave some of it out, or embellish on it,” she said.

For a January concert, when she will play continuo in the Baroque Cimarosa Concerto for Two Flutes, Koman will use an open score, the same as a conductor would use. Reading the score, the harpsichordist can lift lines. “I know what the fiddlers are playing, and there may be scope for embellishing on that.”

Koman first played continuo for the Handel oratorio “Samson” as a student at the College of William and Mary. While there, she often played harpsichord for events in colonial Williamsburg. With the symphony, Koman will play her own harpsichord, a two-rank instrument made in San Diego. She also owns a three-rank “positiv” organ which she uses to play Baroque music, her “first love as keyboardist.”

Along with the Bach concerto, the remainder of the orchestra program--Haydn’s Symphony No. 91 and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2--under guest conductor Zdenek Macal, will be played with 45 musicians, a number that is in line with the size of classical orchestras at the time the Haydn and Beethoven symphonies were composed.

Cardenes described this weekend’s regular subscription concerts as music written for royalty. “Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and Haydn had to make a living,” he said. “I hesitate to say they were pawns, but they were subject to the whims of the court. Most people don’t know the circumstances under which they created music. It was to make a living.”

While their colleagues are playing Bach, Beethoven and Haydn, the remainder of the symphony’s musicians will be playing such holiday sounds as “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” By splitting the orchestra in half, two sets of concerts can be offered at little additional cost to the symphony. A Holiday Pops series of Christmas music will be played this weekend and next week at the Century Ballroom of the El Cortez Center, 730 Beech St.