BostonBaroque is the oldest continuing period instrument orchestra in North America. It was founded in 1973 by the American harpsichordist and conductor, Martin Pearlman, to present concerts of the Baroque and Classical repertoire on period instruments, drawing on the insights of the historical performance movement. The Boston Baroque professional chamber chorus was established as an integral part of the ensemble in 1981. With Pearlman as its music director, the ensemble presents an annual subscription concert series in Greater Boston, Massachusetts; has performed on tour in Carnegie Hall, Chicago's Shubert Theatre, Los Angeles's Disney Hall, at the Ravinia and Tanglewood festivals, and has toured internationally. The orchestra, originally named "Banchetto Musicale", was renamed Boston Baroque in 1992, when Telarc Records, in its first commitment to a period-instrument orchestra, signed the ensemble to produce a series of recordings of major Baroque and Classical repertoire for international commercial distribution. As of 2007, there are 18 recordings in the series, three of which have received Grammy nominations. Boston Baroque is the resident professional ensemble for Boston University'sHistorical Performance Program, where it is helping to train the next generation of period-instrument performers.
Notable performances
Boston's period-instrument premiere of Handel's Messiah in 1981.
Boston's period-instrument premiere of Joseph Haydn’s The Creation in 1989.
Modern world premiere of Der Stein der Weisen in 1998, a Singspiel collaboratively written by members of Mozart's circle--with the likely participation of Mozart himself--which shed's new light on the composition of The Magic Flute one year later.
Boston's first complete cycle of the three surviving Monteverdi operas with new performing versions of L'incoronazione di Poppea and Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria written by Martin Pearlman.
Boston Baroque's European debut, performing Handel's Messiah in Kraków and Warsaw, Poland in 2003.
First professional Boston performances of Luigi Cherubini's Requiem in C minor in 2005, a neglected work highly praised by leading composers of the day and favorably compared with Mozart's Requiem.
Notable recordings
Boston Baroque has performed and recorded period-instrument performances of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos, Handel's Messiah, Purcell's Dido and Æneas, Monteverdi Vespers of 1610, Bach's Mass in B minor, Handel's Concerti Grossi, Op. 6, Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride, Mozart's The Impresario and Mozart's Circle's The Beneficent Dervish, Handel's Music for Royal Fireworks and Water Music, Bach: The Complete Orchestral Suites, Mozart: Flute Concertos and Symphony No. 41 "Jupiter", Vivaldi's Gloria, Bach's Magnificat, Cherubini's Requiem in C minor and March funèbre, Beethoven's Elegiac Song, Op. 118. Boston Baroque has received three Grammy Nominations
Handel’s Messiah, 1992: Best Performance of a Choral Work
Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610, 1998: Best Performance of a Choral Work
Bach’s Mass in B Minor, 2000: Best Performance of a Choral Work
Notable premiere recordings by Boston Baroque include:
First period instrument recording of Mozart's Requiem Mass in D minor in the completion by Robert D. Levin, in which Levin addresses the issues of instrumentation, grammar and structure raised by the traditional Sussmayr completion.
Lost Music of Early America, the first and sole professional CD recording of American Moravian Church music—the first early American classical music. Martin Pearlman researched the music at the Moravian Music Foundation in Salem, North Carolina, and chose and arranged the hymns into patterns appropriate for the Moravian Lovefeast or Liebesmahl, primarily a song service with hymns, psalms and anthems. Included are Lovefeasts for Christmas, Lent and Thanksgiving.
The Philosopher's Stone,, 1790, a collaboratively composed Singspiel with a story based on the same set of fairy-tales from which The Magic Flute was drawn, which attracted renewed attention in 1996, when musicologist David J. Buch discovered a previously unknown copy. Besides numerous correlations with Mozart’s final operatic work, The Magic Flute, which was written for the same company a year later, this copy of The Philosopher’s Stone suggested the likelihood of Mozart's participation in the composition of more of the music than had been previously thought. Boston Baroque was chosen by David J. Buch to give the modern-day world premiere of The Philosopher's Stone. The work was presented in concert form in Boston's Jordan Hall and recorded for Telarc.
First period instrument recording of Luigi Cherubini's long neglected Requiem in C minor, which premiered on January 21, 1817, in a memorial concert below the abbey church of St. Denis to commemorate the anniversary of the executions of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Though held in the highest esteem by Beethoven, Brahms, Berlioz and Wagner, and performed widely in its own day, the piece fell into obscurity along with most of Cherubini's output by the end of the 19th century.
Boston Baroque performed with Mark Morris and the Mark Morris Dance Group in five performances of Henry Purcell's Dido and Æneas, in Chicago and Ann Arbor, in 1996.
