Boston Baroque Releases Live Concert Recording Of Chevalier De Saint-Georges' Violin Concerto In D

Boston Baroque is ecstatic to release a live concert recording of the Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 3, No. 1 by Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges. The recording features GRAMMY-nominated concertmaster and soloist Christina Day Martinson in a stunning performance that The Boston Musical Intelligencer remarked, “Christina Day Martinson delivered the three-movement concerto in ideal style, near flawlessly.”

Joseph Bologne (1745-1799) was born on the French Caribbean Island of Guadeloupe, the son of an enslaved woman of Senegalese origin and a French plantation owner. At age eight, his father brought him over to France, where he was educated and eventually, at the age of 17, given the title “Le Chevalier de Saint-Georges.” Bologne is widely regarded as one of the most accomplished men of his age. He was a notable violinist, composer, conductor, and fencer in France, spending his career conducting, composing concertos, operas, symphonies, and other musical works, and presenting highly virtuosic performances on the violin. Bologne is also known for commissioning and premiering Haydn's Paris Symphonies for his orchestra Le Concert Olympique. Bologne was recently the subject of the major motion picture Chevalier starring Kelvin Harrison, Jr., widely released earlier this year.

Boston Baroque recorded Bologne's Violin Concerto in D Major on December 31, 2021 at GBH's Calderwood Studio with GRAMMY-winning audio engineer Antonio Oliart. Founding Music Director Martin Pearlman led Boston Baroque's world-renown orchestra alongside soloist Christina Day Martinson, who was nominated for a GRAMMY award for her performance on Boston Baroque's commercial recording of Biber's The Mystery Sonata, released by Linn Records in 2018. 

This is the first in what Boston Baroque hopes will be more live performance recording releases. A full list of Boston Baroque's 26 commercial recordings, as well as links to stream the Violin Concerto in D on a variety of audio streaming platforms, can be found here: https://baroque.boston/recordings

Christina Day Martinson serves as Concertmaster for Boston Baroque. Born in Saskatchewan, Canada, she has been a featured soloist with Boston Baroque, the Handel and Haydn Society, The Bach Ensemble, Tempesta di Mare, the Unicamp Symphony Orchestra in Brazil and the Philharmonisch Orkest Mozart in Amsterdam. A recipient of the NetherlandAmerica Foundation Grant and Frank Huntington Beebe Award, Martinson holds degrees from New England Conservatory of Music, Boston, the Royal Conservatory in The Netherlands, and received her Master of Music in Historical Performance from Boston University.   In 2018, Martinson was nominated for a GRAMMY Award for Best Classical Instrumental Solo for her tour-de-force performance of the complete cycle of Heinrich Biber's The Mystery Sonatas, with Boston Baroque.

Martinson also serves as Associate Concertmaster for the Handel and Haydn Society and has performed as Concertmaster under conductors such as Roger Norrington, Richard Egarr, Bernard Labadie, Martin Pearlman, Nicholas McGegan, Laurence Cummings, and Harry Christophers. Martinson's performances of the complete Mystery Sonatas in 2012-13 were hailed by The Boston Globe as a Top 10 Performance of the Year in 2012 and chosen by Jeremy Eichler for his Top Concerts of 2013. 

Martinson has given chamber music recitals in Jordan Hall, Boston, Ishihara Hall, Japan, at the Thüringen Bachwochen in Germany, the Casals Festival, Puerto Rico, and at the Leuven Festival in Belgium. Martinson recorded Vivaldi's Four Seasons with Boston Baroque for Telarc. “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” – Gramophone

Boston Baroque founder, music director, and conductor Martin Pearlman is one of this country's leading interpreters of Baroque and Classical music on period and modern instruments. In addition to Boston Baroque's annual concert season, Mr. Pearlman tours in the United States and Europe and has produced twenty-six major recordings for Telarc and Linn Records. 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. In 2022, Mr. Pearlman was awarded the Samuel Simons Sanford Medal by the Yale School of Music, the most prestigious award conferred by the school, for his leadership and exceptional contributions to period instrument performance.

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; the Boston premiere of Rameau's Pigmalion; the New England premieres of Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride and Alceste; and the Beethoven symphonies on period instruments. Mr. Pearlman is also known for his internationally acclaimed series of Handel operas including Agrippina, Alcina, Giulio Cesare, and Semele. He made his Kennedy Center debut with The Washington National Opera in Handel's Semele and has guest conducted the National Arts Center Orchestra of Ottawa, Utah Opera, Opera Columbus, Boston Lyric Opera, Minnesota Orchestra, San Antonio Symphony and the New World Symphony. Mr. Pearlman is the only conductor from the early music field to have performed live on the internationally televised GRAMMY Awards show.

Mr. 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 1967–1968, he studied harpsichord in Amsterdam with Gustav Leonhardt on a Fulbright Grant, and in 1971 he received his Master of Music in composition from Yale University, studying composition with Yehudi Wyner and harpsichord with Ralph Kirkpatrick. After moving to Boston, he performed widely as a solo harpsichordist in the U. S. and Europe, and in 1973 he founded the first American period-instrument orchestra, Banchetto Musicale, now called Boston Baroque. He also served as Professor of Music in the Historical Performance department at Boston University's School of Music.

Martin Pearlman is also a composer. Recent compositions include a string quartet, piano works, a comic chamber opera The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, a three-act work on Finnegans Wake, as well as The Creation According to Orpheus, for piano, harp, and percussion with string orchestra. He has also composed music for three plays of Samuel Beckett, commissioned by and premiered at New York's 92nd Street Y and performed at Harvard University.

The six-time GRAMMY-nominated Boston Baroque is the first permanent Baroque orchestra established in North America and, according to Fanfare Magazine, is widely regarded as “one of the world's premier period instrument bands.” The ensemble produces lively, emotionally charged, groundbreaking performances of Baroque and Classical works for today's audiences performed on instruments and using performance techniques that reflect the eras in which the music was composed.

Boston Baroque has expanded its reach globally through its partnership with IDAGIO, the world's leading classical music streaming service. Its 2021-2022 Season was the first full season by a Baroque orchestra to stream on the platform, and brought together virtual audiences from across five continents (North America, South America, Asia, Europe, and Australia) and over 17 countries.

Founded in 1973 as “Banchetto Musicale” by Music Director Martin Pearlman, Boston Baroque's orchestra is composed of some of the finest period instrument players in the United States, and is frequently joined by the ensemble's professional chorus and by world-class instrumental and vocal soloists from around the globe. The ensemble has performed at major music centers across the United States and performed recently in Poland for the 2015 Beethoven Festival, with sold-out performances of Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610 in Warsaw and Handel's Messiah in Katowice.

Boston Baroque reaches an international audience with its twenty-six acclaimed recordings. In 2012, after a long relationship with Telarc International, the ensemble became the first American orchestra to record with the highly-regarded UK audiophile label Linn Records, and its release of The Creation received great critical acclaim. In April 2014, the orchestra recorded Monteverdi's rarely performed opera, Il Ritorno d'Ulisse in patria, which was released on Linn Records and received two nominations at the 2016 GRAMMY Awards. 

Boston Baroque's recordings have received six GRAMMY Award Nominations: its 1992 release of Handel's Messiah, 1998 release of Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610, 2000 release of Bach's Mass in B Minor, 2015 release of Monteverdi's Il Ritorno d'Ulisse in patria, and 2018 release of Biber's The Mystery Sonatas.

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