“I didn’t have a long-range plan,” Martin Pearlman says. “I had some concerts I wanted to do. They were well received, so I said let’s do it again.” Ken Yotosukura photograph
Boston Baroque was not always Boston Baroque.
Before becoming the country’s first period instrument orchestra, Boston Baroque was Banchetto Musicale, an ensemble originally comprised of all the early-music instrumentalists that Martin Pearlman could find in 1973 (eight).
Half a century later, after expanding into an orchestra, adding a chorus, making multiple Grammy–nominated recordings, undertaking European tours and staging many enthusiastic performances, only one thing has not changed for Boston Baroque: Martin Pearlman.
Until now.
As a 20–something studying harpsichord, first at Cornell and then at Yale, with a year in Europe meeting Gustav Leonhardt, Pearlman had no grandiose vision of an award-winning ensemble that would perform widely and set standards for performance practice.
“When it started, I didn’t have any long-range plan. Nobody did that then,” Pearlman says. “I just had some concerts I wanted to do. I rented a church in Cambridge, put four concerts together. They were so well received, I said let’s do it again.”
And now Pearlman will do it again, one last time, 52 years later. With this weekend’s production of Handel’s Ariodante, Pearlman will draw his tenure with the ensemble he created to a close.
Tenor Richard Pittsinger and mezzo Megan Moore sporting tartans in the Scottish flavored Ariodante, staged by Boston Baroque April 24–27. Ken Yotosukura photograph
In the beginning, it took most of a decade to assemble an entire orchestra, and then a chorus, and finally to decide whether he wanted to conduct the larger ensemble: “We added repertoire, and it got so big that eventually I had to stop conducting from the harpsichord. It was a crisis, in a way: Was this what I wanted to do?”
It was. Two events in 1981 solidified the group’s standing: performances of Monteverdi’s Poppea, and Bach’s B minor Mass.
Looking back: longtime Boston Baroque favorite Amanda Forsythe (here in Ariodante) has appeared with Martin Pearlman’s ensemble for more than two decades. Ken Yotosukura photograph
“We did our first opera that year—Poppea,” Pearlman says. “It was the opening opera in the very first Boston Early Music Festival. I did my own edition of it—kind of fearless at the time. You do things when you’re young, and some of them work out.”
When Pearlman announced a performance of the B Minor Mass, the Boston Globe asked “can these instruments play it?” “These instruments were meant to play it,” Pearlman said at the time, noting that those questions don’t get asked anymore.
Since then, Banchetto Musicale (“Boston Baroque” came in the ’90s) has been at the forefront of period performance in this country. Boston Baroque’s annual Messiah performances also stretch back to 1981, becoming a cornerstone of the ensemble’s season. The 1992 Messiah recording was one of the Grammy nominations. Pearlman’s original interest in that score—or scores, as he has explored in detail the many versions that Handel left behind—was scholarly, almost disingenuous.
“I hadn’t seen Messiah every year, and so I didn’t bring any baggage to it,” he says. “Most of the performances then were slow and reverential; we did something more lively.”
Grammys became commonplace, thanks to topflight recordings on Linn Records and Telarc. More recently the development of international followers on Idagio and other platforms kept the organization afloat during the pandemic, and also expanded the audience internationally.
Under Pearlman, Boston Baroque became the first period ensemble to perform at Carnegie Hall, and at Disney Hall. The group made numerous trips to San Juan’s Casals Festival, and performed for a live Grammy television audience—the only period orchestra ever to do so.
Along the way the music that was acceptable for period performance grew, expanding deeper into later repertory. “Everything from 1620 to 1820,” Pearlman suggests as a range. Eventually Boston Baroque tackled composers like Mendelssohn, and the Beethoven symphonies. “Beethoven is at the outer limit of what we do,” he admits. “After that, I feel there are diminishing returns.”
Throughout the years it has been all Pearlman. The repertory decisions, the scholarship, the notes, casting the singers and instrumentalists—all the choices have been his. And after this weekend, that must change.
The organization has not yet announced a successor. “It is unprecedented,” executive director Sarah Radcliffe-Marrs says of the search. “Boston Baroque has only had one conductor all these years.” A search will extend into next season, with five guest conductors who have yet to be announced.
Retirement invites new opportunities. Pearlman—who studied composition with Karel Husa at Cornell and Yehudi Wyner at Yale—has written a number of distinguished compositions, and will continue.
His daughter Anna Pearlman has created her own period orchestra, North Star Baroque, in Portland, ME, which Pearlman will accompany. He remains director emeritus of Boston Baroque, although he’s letting others make future plans—“I’ll stay involved,” he says. But it is certain that Boston Baroque won’t be the same without him.