Boston Baroque

The Williams College Department of Music presents four members of the Boston Baroque in a concert of intimate chamber music on Sunday, Nov. 14, at 3 p.m. in Brooks-Rogers Recital Hall on the Williams college campus. This free event is open to the public.

At Williams College, homegrown talent comprised of faculty, community, students or a mixed stew of the above, provide an amazing talent pool from which a huge variety of performances are staged. To stir the cauldron, however, visiting artists provide the community with an extra jolt to get the blender going. Parachuting in from big cities or from other cultures, the energy of these visitors leaves swirls and eddies of inspiration, which – building over time – lift the wings of creativity. The local music scene is greatly enriched and audiences have a chance to experience performances that would otherwise be out of reach.

Now within reach: the three-time Grammy Nominee Boston Baroque—the first permanent baroque orchestra established in North America. Widely regarded as “one of the world’s premier period-instrument bands” (Fanfare), their performances and recordings of baroque and classical repertoire have been acclaimed for their freshness, virtuosity, and exuberant appeal. On this program, members of Boston Baroque perform solo and trio sonatas by J.S. Bach, Dario Castello, Francois Couperin, Biber, and Purcell.

Founded in 1973 by Martin Pearlman, Boston Baroque has toured the world, receiving critical acclaim. Boston Baroque’s recordings—of which Fanfare magazine wrote “each one is an incomparable gem”—are heard by millions on classical radio stations in this country and Europe. Boston Baroque is the resident professional ensemble for Boston University’s Historical Performance Program, where it is helping to train the next generation of period-instrument performers.

The performers of Boston Baroque visiting Williams bring with them a great deal of experience: Violinist Christina Day Martinson is concertmaster of Boston Baroque and recorded Vivaldi’s Four Seasons with Boston Baroque for TELARC records in 2009. Susanna Ogata, violinist, received her Bachelor and Master degrees from the Eastman School of Music where she studied with and served as teaching assistant for Charles Castleman. Sarah Freiberg is a principal cellist of the Handel and Haydn Society and Boston Baroque. She has performed with the New York Collegium, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra (San Francisco), Portland Baroque (Oregon), Seattle Baroque, the Boston Early Music Festival and Arion (Montreal). Boston Baroque’s leader and harpsichordist, Martin Pearlman, is one of this country’s leading interpreters of Baroque and Classical music on period and modern instruments. Hailed for his “fresh, buoyant interpretations,” and his “vivid realizations teeming with life,” Pearlman has been acclaimed for more than thirty-five years in the orchestral, choral, and operatic repertoire from Monteverdi to Beethoven. Mr. Pearlman is the only conductor from the period-instrument field to have performed live on the internationally televised Grammy Awards show. He serves as Professor of Music at the Boston University School of Music.

Musicians interested in authentic music practices will not want to miss this afternoon of chamber music with these four members of Boston Baroque. For the rest of us this is an opportunity to lose ourselves in the timelessly beautiful music of the baroque. Either way, Boston Baroque is a visitor we should all want to meet.

Sarah Freiberg

Sarah Freiberg is a principal cellist of the Handel and Haydn Society and Boston Baroque. She has performed with the New York Collegium, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra (San Francisco), Portland Baroque (Oregon), Seattle Baroque, the Boston Early Music Festival and Arion (Montreal). As a corresponding editor for STRINGS magazine, she has contributed numerous articles to that publication. Sarah edited the Guerini cello sonatas for both PRB Productions and Broude Brothers, and recorded them and Laurenti sonatas for Centaur. She teaches in the Historical Performance department of Boston University and is Chair of Strings and Chamber Music at the Powers Music School in Belmont, MA. Sarah received her D.M.A. and M.M. degrees from S.U.N.Y. at Stony Brook, and holds degrees from the San Francisco Conservatory, Brown University and the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria. Ms. Freiberg can be heard on numerous recordings, including as soloist on a recent release of Boston Baroque performing works by Vivaldi and Geminiani.

Christina Day Martinson

Born in Saskatchewan, Canada, Christina Day Martinson has twice been a National Finalist and prize-winner in the Canadian Music Competition. She has performed solo concertos with Boston Baroque, Tempesta di Mare, the UNICAMP Symphony Orchestra in Brazil, Joshua Rifkin’s Bach Ensemble and the Symphony Orkest Mozart in Amsterdam.

She is the recipient of the Netherland-America Foundation Grant and Frank Huntington Beebe Award.

Ms. Martinson serves as concertmaster for Boston Baroque, is a tenured member of the Handel and Haydn Society and recently served as concertmaster under Sir Roger Norrington. Ms. Martinson has been featured twice on WGBH radio’s “Classics in the Morning” with Cathy Fuller, performing Heinrich Biber’s Mystery Sonatas with harpsichordist Martin Pearlman. She has given chamber music recitals in Jordan Hall as well as a nationally televised chamber concert in Japan’s Ishihara Hall in June 2006. In March 2008, Ms. Martinson performed all of J.S. Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos with Joshua Rifkin’s Bach Ensemble at the Turingen Bachwonen Festival in Germany. She peformed Vivaldi’s Four Seasons in 2008 and Bach’s E major Concerto in 2009 on Boston Baroque’s main series and at the Pablo Casals Festival in Puerto Rico. Ms. Martinson recently recorded Vivaldi’s Four Seasons with Boston Baroque for Telarc Records. The CD was released in January, 2009. “This is story-telling par excellence, Martinson’s polished technique and elegant musicianship fired in the kiln of imagination to produce mind-pictures of such vividness that the Greek term ekphrasis, with all its rhetorical associations, hardly covers it” Gramaphone, May, 2009.

Susanna Ogata

Susanna Ogata, violinist, received her Bachelor and Master degrees from the Eastman School of Music where she studied with and served as teaching assistant for Charles Castleman. At Eastman, she was a founding member of the Florestan String Quartet, completing a rural residency in Kentucky , funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts and Chamber Music America . She studied period instrument performance practice with leading figures such as Paul O’Dette and Malcolm Bilson. She then received an Artist Diploma at the Longy School of Music where she studied modern violin with Laura Bossert and Baroque violin with Dana Maiben.

Susanna Ogata has also collaborated as chamber musician with Musicians of the Old Post Road, Lyrica Boston, Bang on a Can, and Alarm Will Sound . She has performed as soloist and member with the Bach Ensemble led by Joshua Rifkin. She has also performed with Boston Baroque, Foundling, Genessee Early Music Society, Sarasa, and Boston Early Music Festival. Ms. Ogata is a tenured member of the Handel and Haydn Society, where she served as a guest concertmaster in the 2009-2010 season.

Susanna Ogata has appeared as soloist with such orchestras as the Eastman Musica Nova Ensemble, Foundling, Boston Virtuosi, Las Vegas Festival Orchestra, and the Waterloo/Cedar Falls Symphony Orchestra. She has recorded for Nonesuch and Telarc and served on the faculty at the Longy School of Music.

Martin Pearlman

Martin Pearlman is one of this country’s leading interpreters of Baroque and Classical music on period and modern instruments. Hailed for his “fresh, buoyant interpretations,” and his “vivid realizations teeming with life,” Pearlman has been acclaimed for more than thirty-five years in the orchestral, choral, and operatic repertoire from Monteverdi to Beethoven.

Martin Pearlman is the founder, music director, and conductor of the orchestra and chorus of Boston Baroque, now widely regarded as “Some of the finest American interpreters of music of this era” (Fanfare). He leads Boston Baroque in an annual subscription concert series in Greater Boston, tours in the U.S. and Europe, and has produced 19 major recordings with Telarc to date. The recordings are heard by millions in thirty countries worldwide, and have received three Grammy nominations.

Highlights of his work include the complete Monteverdi opera cycle, with his own new performing editions of L’incoronazione di Poppea and Il ritorno d’Ulisse; the American premiere of Rameau’s Zoroastre and Boston premiere of Rameau’s Pigmalion; the New England premieres of Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride and Alceste; an exploration of the Beethoven symphonies on period instruments called “revelatory” by the Boston Globe; an internationally acclaimed series of Handel operas including Agrippina, Alcina, Giulio Cesare, and Semele; and a series of Mozart operas including Abduction from the Seraglio, Magic Flute, Marriage of Figaro, Così fan tutte, The Impresario, and Don Giovanni, the last of which was broadcast nationally on public radio. Mr. Pearlman’s completion and orchestration of music from Mozart’s Lo Sposo Deluso, his performing version of Purcell’s Comical History of Don Quixote, and his new orchestration of Cimarosa’s Il Maestro di Cappella were all premiered by Boston Baroque.

Martin Pearlman’s Kennedy Center debut with The Washington Opera in Handel’s Semele, was hailed by The Washington Times as “wonderfully expressive … crisp and clearly stamped with his personal vision.” Other guest conducting highlights include the Monteverdi Vespers with the National Arts Center Orchestra of Ottawa, and performances with the Minnesota Orchestra, Utah Opera, Opera Columbus, Boston Lyric Opera, San Antonio Symphony, Springfield (MA) Symphony, and the New World Symphony. Mr. Pearlman is also a composer. His The Creation according to Orpheus was given its world premiere by the New England String Ensemble in 2003–2004, and his commissioned music for three plays of Samuel Beckett was premiered at New York’s 92nd Street “Y” in 2006 and performed at Harvard’s New College Theatre in 2007.

Mr. Pearlman is the only conductor from the period-instrument field to have performed live on the internationally televised Grammy Awards show. He serves as Professor of Music at the Boston University School of Music.