Going behind the scenes with Boston Baroque

WORCESTER -- The classical recording business may be in terrible shape, but Martin Pearlman and Boston Baroque continue to make CDs for Telarc, and the recordings continue to do well in the marketplace. Telarc doesn't release sales figures, but it is safe to say that Boston Baroque's releases -- more than a dozen single discs or multiple-CD albums -- have sold more than 250,000 copies.

This weekend, former Boston Symphony Orchestra principal flute Jacques Zoon returns to play Mozart's flute concertos with Boston Baroque in Jordan Hall; next week the musicians travel to Worcester's Mechanics Hall to record the concertos. At the concerts, Boston Baroque will sell advance copies of its new Telarc disc, "Bach's Four Suites for Orchestra," recorded in six sessions last September in Worcester (the disc won't hit the stores until April).

Telarc and other labels have long been attracted by the amenities and acoustics of Mechanics Hall. One day last September, the players of Boston Baroque were set up on the floor of the hall amid a thicket of more than two dozen microphones, including a remarkable styrofoam head suspended above Pearlman, with microphones where its ears ought to be.

Mechanics Hall is a gracious, symmetrical, formal space adorned by paintings in opulent gold frames, but the players were casually dressed in jeans and shorts. Under one chair lay a copy of Rolling Stone with the image of Britney Spears on the cover.

Bach's bustling First Suite was the day's order of business. Producer Thom Moore and a team of engineers worked upstairs, in a separate room; Moore communicated with Pearlman and the players via loudspeaker, and he could watch the proceedings on a TV monitor. The recording team listened over $7,000 Waveform Mach 17 speakers set on plastic milk crates. Between movements, Pearlman and a contingent of the players crowded into the control room to listen to playbacks; a box of increasingly stale doughnuts refueled energies.

Moore, who is also a prominent professional oboist back home in Cleveland, knows exactly how to communicate with musicians; he is always unsparing but considerate. The players know they can trust him and his ears.

And he enjoys an easy, bantering relationship with Pearlman. "I hear some questionable notes in there," Moore says. Pearlman, quick on the uptake, replies, "Don't play the questionable notes." "I heard a chair squeak," Moore complains. "It's in the score," Pearlman jokes.

As often as not, additional takes are required for non-performance reasons -- truck noise from the street, a twang in the harpsichord. Whenever he can, Moore's disembodied voice is quick to congratulate. "That's it -- there you go! Is everyone happy?"

Last week, Moore said, "What I wanted to achieve in the recording was to bring out the unique characteristics of each suite. The Fourth Suite is for me the most conversational between winds and strings, so we set up the microphones to accommodate that. The First Suite is all about the reeds, so we moved the winds up into a semicircle in front of the conductor to put them in the spotlight. The Second Suite is the most intimate, and we wanted to give that feeling." This process mirrors how Pearlman seats the players for the suites in concert.

Boston Baroque has played all of these pieces over the years, but Pearlman scheduled four preliminary rehearsals before the recording sessions. In Worcester he was particularly concerned about the most famous episode in the suites, the famous "Air on the G String." Even when they had recorded a satisfactory performance, Pearlman wanted another go at it. So at a later session, he asked the players to do it again.

"Everyone knew that we had done it and that it was perfectly OK, and absolutely in tune," he recalls. "But I felt we had focused on that sort of thing instead of letting the music develop a mesmerizing, long flow. Everyone was really tired and relaxed, and I stretched it out and played with it a little more, and it really worked."

Pearlman says he doesn't worry about how crowded the catalog is with rival versions when he records works as popular as the Bach suites. "I just do my own thing," he says, "and I know the performances will be different from others simply because I am a different person. What I have noticed with projects like our Bach Brandenburg Concertos and Handel's `Messiah' -- pieces that have been recorded 150 times before -- is if you do them really well, then you get noticed, and that does something for the group."

Boston Baroque's executive director, Carole Friedman, says the recordings have not only expanded the ensemble's reputation but also enhanced its quality: "The records have invigorated our audience, and the reception the records have earned -- including three Grammy nominations -- has changed us from a local into a national and international ensemble. The recordings have led to invitations to tour in Europe and in America. We have five weekends a year to say `Come and hear us,' but the recordings can introduce us to people all the time. And the recordings have had a tremendous impact on the musicians. The intensity of the recording process is a lot different than rehearsing a concert and presenting it. And of course through recordings, the group can hear itself."

Boston Baroque's Telarc catalog includes both standard works such as Bach's Mass in B minor and more esoteric projects, including two operas -- unknown when recorded -- that contain music by Mozart. The ensemble's previous disc, Handel's "Water Music" and "Music for the Royal Fireworks," marked a return to core repertory.

"When we were planning these last two discs," Moore says, "we wanted to show off the orchestra. It is a virtuoso band with some of the finest players in America, and we wanted to really show the world what they've got. I finished editing the record in January, but I can't stop listening to it -- when I'm driving to work, it's what I play in my car."