“Mr. Pearlman is an inventive conductor with an ear for color, balance and placement.”
Boston Baroque's founder, music director and conductor Martin Pearlman has been one of this country's leading interpreters of Baroque and Classical period music on both early and modern instruments. He founded Boston Baroque in 1973 under its original name, Banchetto Musicale. It was the first period-instrument orchestra established in America, and he led that ensemble for 52 years, until his retirement in 2025. In addition to Boston Baroque's annual concert season, the ensemble has toured in the United States and Europe and has produced twenty-six major recordings for Telarc International in the U.S. and Linn Records in the U.K. In 2022, Mr. Pearlman was awarded the Samuel Simons Sanford medal by the Yale School of Music, the school's most prestigious award, for his leadership and exceptional contributions to the field of music.
Highlights of his work have included his internationally acclaimed series of Handel operas -- Agrippina, Alcina, Giulio Cesare, Semele and others; performances of all the Beethoven symphonies on period instruments; the American premiere of Rameau's opera Zoroastre; and the New England premieres of Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride and Alceste. His new editions of Monteverdi's L'Incoronazione di Poppea and Il ritorno d'Ulisse, as well as his orchestration of Cimarosa's Il maestro di cappella, his performing version of Purcell's Comical History of Don Quixote, and his completion and orchestration of music from Mozart's Lo sposo deluso were all premiered by Boston Baroque.
Mr. Pearlman has also conducted modern-instrument orchestras, including The Washington National Opera at the Kennedy Center, the National Arts Center Orchestra in Ottawa, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Utah Opera, Opera Columbus, Boston Lyric Opera, the San Antonio Symphony and the New World Symphony. He is the only conductor from the early music field to have performed live on the internationally televised GRAMMY® Awards show.
“Martin Pearlman led the remarkable Boston Baroque orchestra and chorus in a performance filled with energy and sparkling wit... [and] one could hardly ask for a better cast.”
Mr. Pearlman is also a composer. Recent compositions have included a string quintet, piano works, a comic opera, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, a three-act work on James Joyce's Finnegans Wake, and The Creation According to Orpheus for piano, harp, percussion, and string orchestra. His music for three Samuel Beckett plays was commissioned by and premiered at New York's 92nd Street Y, and was performed at Harvard University.
Martin Pearlman grew up in Oak Park, Illinois, where he received training in composition, violin, piano, and theory. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Cornell University, where he studied composition with Karel Husa and Robert Palmer. In 1967-68, he studied harpsichord in Amsterdam with Gustav Leonhardt on a Fulbright Grant, and in 1971, he received his Master's in composition from Yale University, studying composition with Yehudi Wyner and harpsichord with Ralph Kirkpatrick. After moving to Boston, he performed widely as a harpsichord soloist in the U.S. and Europe before founding and conducting Boston Baroque. He also served as Professor of Music in the Historical Performance department at Boston University's School of Music.
LISTEN & LEARN MORE
Recordings of Martin Pearlman performing on the harpsichord are available on his YouTube channel.
Click here for his interview on All Things Considered.
Click here to watch his video interview with WGBH on his retirement.