News
An Interview with Martin Pearlman
By Albert Imperato
for Playbillarts.com
The founder and director of North America's oldest period-instrument band talks about the music on his latest CD (and the unusual story behind it), why Cherubini doesn't get more respect, and the early music movement in the US.
Martin Pearlman is founder, music director and conductor of Boston Baroque, the pioneering ensemble that became, in 1973, the first permanent period-instrument orchestra established in North America. Together, Pearlman and the orchestra have explored baroque and classical repertoire from Monteverdi to Beethoven, both in their ongoing subscription concerts throughout the greater Boston area and in a series of highly acclaimed recordings for Telarc. Their discography includes major baroque and classical choral works — their traversals of Handel’s Messiah, Monteverdi’s Vespers and Bach’s B minor Mass were all Grammy nominees — two complete operas, orchestral favorites such as Bach’s Brandenburgs and Orchestral Suites, and unusual rediscoveries such as the music of the Moravians and The Philosopher’s Stone. Their new album, featuring Luigi Cherubini’s rarely heard Requiem in C minor and Beethoven’s Elegiac Song, Op. 118, is their 17th release for the label.
In the interview below, Pearlman discusses the new recording, the evolution of the period instrument movement and his enthusiasm for the music of Pierre Boulez.
Your new recording of Cherubini’s Requiem in C minor has just come out on Telarc. What made you decide to record this work now?
I find that period very interesting — the outer limit for what we do on period instruments. It’s a piece that I had read about and heard about for a long time, because it was extremely popular in its day. And I was fascinated that so many important composers — such as Beethoven, Schumann, Berlioz, Brahms and Wagner — had such great admiration for it but that it is nonetheless virtually unperformed in our own time. So I thought: let’s find out. And it turns out that it’s a wonderful piece.
I also loved the story behind it. It was commissioned to commemorate the anniversary of the executions of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette on the guillotine. The monarchy had just been restored after Napoleon, and the government had the bodies found and buried in the crypt of St. Denis, where most of the other kings of France were buried. Then they arranged a memorial service down in the crypt, and that is where the first performance took place. It must have been an extraordinary event.
What do you think happened? Why don’t we hear this work more often today?
Well, Cherubini’s star has faded. Styles changed and Cherubini wasn’t cutting-edge musically. He wasn’t in the vanguard of what was happening with romantic music in the later 19th century. And of course, some of his works are stronger than others. Some are more academic and subdued and have given him a reputation that clouds even his great works. But in his time he was considered one of the great composers — admired by all the composers we most admire today.
Does the fact that there are no soloists in this piece make it hard for it to compete with the famous Requiems of Mozart and others?
As far as performing it goes, it’s less expensive because it doesn’t have soloists — so that’s actually to its benefit. An audience might feel that a big piece with no soloists won’t have much variety, but you quickly learn hearing this piece that there’s a tremendous amount of variety in the orchestral and vocal writing. There are fascinating orchestral colors and many different colors and textures even in the chorus, where Cherubini sometimes even takes a single voice line and treats it soloistically. So there’s plenty of variety. With the orchestra, he’ll leave out the violins in a movement for a darker color. When the text is about the archangel Michael the music goes to the high instruments and the higher voices in the chorus. Regarding the end of the whole piece, where it fades down to the chorus repeatedly chanting one note, Berlioz said it was an astonishing effect that had never been heard before. Composers most often tried to find a way to set those final words, "Grant us peace," as an exciting and powerful conclusion, but Cherubini just lets the music settle very naturally to a quiet, contemplative ending. It’s a striking effect.
Besides this hushed ending, are there other “lump in your throat” moments that you would point out to listeners?
Well, the big gong stroke towards the beginning of the “Dies Irae” must have caused quite a stir echoing in the crypt where the work was premiered in 1817. That gong stroke was criticized in its day for being too theatrical an effect at such a ceremony, but it’s undeniably effective. In fact, the drama of the whole piece is very powerful. Beethoven said if he were to write a Requiem, this piece would be his only model.
In Berlioz’s Memoirs, the composer paints a picture of Cherubini as being an unpleasant and unhelpful fellow, even though he occasionally expresses admiration for some of Cherubini’s music. Do feel that Berlioz’s enmity for Cherubini had some kind of lasting effect on the latter’s posthumous reputation?
Yes, I think so. Berlioz’s Memoirs are fascinating but self-serving. Remember, Berlioz was a student at the Paris Conservatory, when Cherubini was director there. That was late in Cherubini’s life. So there’s an academic, disciplinarian side to Cherubini that’s emphasized by Berlioz, and that distorts our view of Cherubini’s achievements as a composer. But even Berlioz admired this Requiem. And it should be said that the etudes Cherubini wrote and the reforms he instituted at the Conservatory were very influential and affected French music teaching for the rest of the century. You know, as I was working on this album, I recalled seeing a number of old concert halls where Cherubini’s name is written on the walls and ceilings up front with Beethoven and Mozart and Gluck. It reflects a kind of popularity that people might wonder at today.
Do you have any plans to record or perform other works by Cherubini? Should we all be encouraging a Cherubini revival?
I’d love to: he wrote some great operas, especially in the first part of his life, and some great religious works later in life. In between those two periods of popularity was a time when he was out of favor, suffering from depression, and not composing. It's a fascinating career, and I think it’s time that his music is heard again. His opera Medée and some of the masses would be very interesting to do.
How did Beethoven’s Elegiac Song get selected as a discmate for this Requiem? Did it have anything to do with Beethoven being such an ardent admirer of Cherubini’s work?
Yes, I liked the connection, which is why, when I was looking for pieces to pair with the Requiem, I thought about Beethoven. And Cherubini's Requiem was even played at Beethoven's funeral service. Very few people seem to know the Elegiac Song. But it’s a wonderful work from a transitional period in Beethoven’s life — written after the heroic concertos and symphonies and before his last period with the more internalized works like the late quartets. He wrote the Elegiac Song originally for string quartet and a quartet of voices, and it's related thematically to the Requiem in that it commemorates the death of the wife of his friend (who was also Beethoven’s former landlord). It just seemed to fit. And it’s a gorgeous, gentle piece, which is why I put it first: so that it wouldn’t get lost after this massive Requiem. And we end the disc with a funeral march by Cherubini: a small piece with grand theatrical gestures. Lots of gong — more formal than the other two pieces, but it closes the proceedings in appropriate style.
Your new album is your 17th for Telarc. At a time when the recording industry is mostly described as troubled, it must feel particularly rewarding to have had such a long and fruitful partnership with the label.
Yes, it is. Particularly with a company that is known for producing such wonderful sound. With Telarc, you feel that you’re really being represented in a musically satisfying manner, and that's a wonderful thing. We've also been fortunate to be working with a producer, Thom Moore, who's really in tune with what we're trying to do.
At a time when so much has already been recorded, is it difficult for you to come up with concepts for new recordings? Or is there plenty of repertoire but not enough with real commercial appeal?
I think it’s the latter. Just about everything has been recorded, but fortunately, we’ve been able to do a mix of popular much-recorded works as well as music that isn’t well known. Early on we did a Messiah that got a Grammy nomination. When you do well with a recording that has a lot of competition, that’s a good thing — same with Bach’s Brandenburgs and Suites. But our album of Moravian music is a personal favorite of mine, because it's beautiful music that you don't hear that often, some of the earliest music written in this country. It’s great that Telarc will let us record such rarities. We’ve also gotten to record some rarely heard operas, such as Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride and The Philosopher’s Stone, a very fine singspiel created by the same singers who premiered The Magic Flute one year later, which throws a fascinating new light on Mozart.
My feeling about performing well-known repertoire is that it’s important not to try to do anything self-consciously different. If I do it the way I personally feel it, that will automatically give it a different character from another recording. With the greatest works, there’s room for many interpretations.
Do you have any particular dream projects you’re considering now for recording or on stage? Anything special you’re already working on for your 35th anniversary season in 2008/2009?
There’s lots of music I’d still like to do, some of it commercially viable, some not. But I should say that I'm very blessed to be in a situation where I'm able to do most of the music that I want to do. I'm not somone who has wanted to perform constantly or to be forever travelling. I've always been more interested in focussing on performances that interest me and doing them in the way that I would like to hear them. I do sometimes conduct other orchestras, and that can be enjoyable, but my main satisfaction comes from the responsiveness and detail I can get with Boston Baroque, where we have built up a musical and personal rapport over so many years.
That said, there are recordings I would like to be able to make. We’ve performed all three Monteverdi operas and I’d love to record my own versions of the two operas that need completions (Ulysses and Poppea). I’d also love to do more Gluck opera. But the marketplace today is certainly challenging. Each record has to be viewed as a single entity — you have to fill a niche, or do something really unusual to make it worthwhile.
Last year, The New York Times ruffled some feathers when a London-based reporter wrote a big story about the evolution of the period-instrument movement. A main point in the story is that what started as a revolution is now a mainstream commodity, but the article focused heavily on the UK scene and intimated that not much was really happening in the States. Did you read the article and what’s your response to that point of view?
I did read that article. I think it’s a point of view that’s been promoted by people outside this country who don’t know the scene here very well. There was a point when period instruments took off in the UK because of support for recordings there: they made English groups well known and gave many people the impression that there was just one proper style for performing Baroque music. The American scene was a bit slower to take off, especially with recordings. Boston Baroque was founded at the same time as the earliest British early music groups. I remember in 1980 that the BBC recorded us here and they said we were more advanced at that time than what was going on in London. But the recording industry made a huge difference in Europe, raising the profile of the period instrument groups there. So it was terrific that Telarc wanted an American group on its label.
The field is not necessarily centered in New York, so maybe that’s why people who don't know the American early music scene don’t see how much there is. But it is tremendously vital. Sometimes it strikes me as simply a form of negative promotion or publicity to say that nothing is happening here, but if you go to Boston, San Francisco and certain other cities in the U. S., you see how much is happening in period instrument performance.
Tell us about the early days of Boston Baroque.
We were originally called Banchetto Musicale and we were the first permanent period instrument orchestra in North America. Concentus Musicus of Vienna was grandfather to us all, but when we started, I had pretty much everyone in this part of the country who could play a Baroque instrument well. We were playing concertos one player to a part at that point. As more Baroque instruments became available and people were able to play them, the orchestra grew. I then formed a chorus to expand the repertoire and have always directed all its rehearsals, so that it could be stylistically (and technically!) comparable to the orchestra. Ultimately, we grew into doing opera, as well. We did a lot of American period-instrument premieres in those days, including even Don Giovanni. Eventually, some of the people playing with us started branching out into other cities — to San Francisco, to Toronto, and elsewhere — the director of Tafelmusik, Jeanne Lamon, played with us in the early days, as did founding members of Philharmonia Baroque. Things radiated outward and it was a gratifying experience to see what we started in Boston taking root elsewhere, as well.
What I see now is that there’s a new generation. A number of our musicians have been with us since the beginning over 30 years ago, and many have been with us for over 20 years, but we also now have players and singers who were not even born yet when we started. We have a program at Boston University where we train instrumentalists and singers, and a few of the most advanced graduates now perform with us, so there’s a great feeling of evolution. In the early years I spent a lot of time encouraging people to play Baroque instruments, if I felt they might be compatible with them. And after a time, there was a critical mass of players that other groups in Boston could draw on for concerts. Eventually, even the Handel and Haydn Society, the oldest performing arts organization in this country, moved over to period instruments.
Has becoming more “mainstream” taken away any of the fun of being the “trouble makers” you original-instrument pioneers were back in the 1970s?
We may be more mainstream, but that hasn’t lessened the sense of excitement. Our audiences are very devoted — and they are not early music specialists. They go to the opera, symphony, etc. I like the fact that we have a committed mainstream audience. Now it isn't so important any more to be the “first” or the “only” one to do something. Success depends more on how good the artistic experience is. So overall, I think there’s a maturing that has taken place, not a decline.
Who are some your heroes — musical and otherwise?
In terms of performers I’ve been influenced by the great pianists — Rachmaninoff, Levine, Hoffman, Horowitz. If I were to point to one thing about them that has influenced me it’s the sense that their enormous virtuosity disappears in their music-making. Their technique is comfortable and completely directed at the music. That’s inspiring to me.
Contemporary composers are also very important to me. My background in school was actually composition and I still do a lot of composing. Perhaps my greatest hero as performer and composer is Pierre Boulez. I think he’s an absolutely extraordinary composer — truly brilliant — and he's an extraordinary conductor as well, one of the great musical minds of our time. I also have tremendous admiration for Elliot Carter — I’ve studied many of his works and been very influenced by them.
Romantic pianists and modernist composers — very interesting heroes for a period-instrument maverick!
I’m not an antiquarian! — and I guess I've never really been comfortable with the "early music" label. Yes, I’ve studied the old sources. I grew up musically when you didn’t have many recordings of period instruments, so we studied all the written treatises to help us shape our ideas about performance. But my interest was simply in music-making. Period-instrument playing is one of the “modern” ways to play. It became popular and interesting to audiences because it appealed to the sensibility of our times. My orientation isn’t to re-create a particular event. I'm more interested in trying to understand the mindset and the thinking and the sound picture that a composer had and to perform within that range. And it is a range. You have so much more possibility of being personally involved in the interpretation and expression of a piece if you approach things this way. That’s what music-making is all about. It’s not about getting the facts right! The facts can be there in the background, but they need to be invisible. Like the techniques of the great pianists.
And other heroes?
In the field of early music I have great and special admiration for two people: the harpsichordist Gustav Leonhardt, whom I studied with in Holland, and the conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt. They are both seminal figures in the revival of Baroque performance and they’re both still active and influential.
How about non-musical heroes?
As a thinker, one person who comes to mind is the intellectual historian Frances Yates. She is someone who can bring to life areas that have been obscure or overlooked, like the Hermetic tradition in the Renaissance, and do it with such deep scholarship and insight and in such beautifully clear writing that it’s always been my standard for what scholarship can be. And have the Marx Brothers ever been mentioned together with her? They've been my heroes for a long time — role models in many ways.
How about composers you don’t do with Boston Baroque?
Well, I love Mahler and Schoenberg. Boulez’s recordings of their music are real ear-openers. Boulez really clarified Schoenberg’s Moses and Aaron for me. His recording was one of the first performances I heard that really made music out of it.
What do you do when you’re not studying and performing music?
I spend time composing. I wrote some music for three Beckett plays that were done in New York City last year, and I had an orchestra piece played. My connection to contemporary music — listening to it and writing it — is very important to me. And I love to read. I read all kinds of books in different fields: art books, classic literature, history, books about languages. I'll often focus on a fascination I may have with a particular culture or period.
Any particular favorite book you’d like to single out?
Too many to mention, but I’m very fond of Thomas Mann. One of my favorites by him, Joseph and His Brothers, is like Cherubini’s Requiem in a way: it’s recognized as a very great work by those who have read it, but it seems to be out of fashion at the moment and it's not so well known any more.