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EARLY MUSIC REVIEW
September 15, 2005
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By Michelle Dulak Thomson
It's conventional to say that the death of a great person leaves an unfillable hole. Laurette Goldberg's death last April certainly
did that; but it can't be said that she left nothing to fill it. Thursday's tribute concert at First Congregational Church, Berkeley
gave its audience both a fair idea of what we lost by her death, and a better idea what we gained by her life.
For me, coming late both to the Early Music scene and to the Bay Area version of it, the first impression was that Laurette
Goldberg somehow had managed to get a finger in every pie; it took awhile for me to understand that she had baked rather more than
half the pies herself. Thursday's tribute concert deliberately sent, as it were, emissaries from programs and institutions she had
touched and in many cases founded: from Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, from MusicSources, from the Junior Bach Festival, from the
San Francisco Conservatory's historical-performance program. The sheer scope of her activities became clearer to me than it ever
had been.
The spoken tributes were as full of humor as of tender regard. Anthony Martin, who runs the Conservatory's baroque ensemble and
also is one of Philharmonia's rotating principals, led off. I think it was the composer Elinor Armer (also on the Conservatory
faculty), though, who mentioned that Goldberg's Conservatory studio had, perhaps inevitably, been dubbed the "Den of Antiquity."
Gilbert Martinez, now artistic director of MusicSources, recounted having heard the young Philharmonia on tour in his native
Bakersfield in the early 80s, and being smitten by the sound. (It's more or less impossible to imagine Philharmonia today going on
tour to Bakersfield, which is not necessarily a good thing; but that's a topic for another day.) Nicholas McGegan recounted how he
came to become Music Director of Philharmonia, some twenty years ago. And a charming short biographical film (Laurette Goldberg
baby pictures? good heavens) by Bernard Gauweiler preceded everything but Martin's opening remarks.
On the musical side it was, again, a gathering of ambassadors. For the Junior Bach Festival — which Goldberg did her best to turn in a historical-performance direction — there was 17-year-old recorder player Andrew Newbery Levy, playing the Allemande of Bach's solo-flute Partita, eloquently if not without a few strange hesitations that seemed to owe nothing either to phrasing or to the need to breathe. Martinez played the intricate Allemande of the D-major keyboard Partita, saying beforehand that Goldberg had once asked that it be played at her memorial service. It's hard to think of a piece more apt, and his was a tender and rather beautiful performance. Next came soprano Judith Nelson — who had worked with Goldberg in chamber repertoire, as a member of the Elizabethan Trio and of Tapestry, long before Philharmonia was a gleam in anyone's eye. Her contribution was Purcell's An Evening Hymn, richly and expressively sung, with McGegan and cellist Farley Pearce in deft accompaniment. And then Philharmonia was broken out. First for the Bach (basically transcribed Vivaldi, as Nic cheerfully explained) four- harpsichord Concerto, and then for the third Orchestral Suite. The concerto benefited, I'd guess, directly and indirectly from Goldberg's legacy. One of the four instruments, we were told, was by John Phillips; another by Kevin Fryer. Whether either was from the MusicSources collection I don't know; but I doubt that two such excellent makers would be working from the Bay Area were it not for the magnificent Bay Area early-music community that Goldberg helped build. The players were Davitt Moroney, Martinez, Katherine Roberts Perl, and Kathleen McIntosh, and in aggregate they made a fine ear-tickling noise, supported well though deferentially by the Philharmonia players. As for the Suite, it was brilliant (via the brass) and elegant (via concertmaster Kati Kyme's seemingly effortless trek through the opening Ouverture), and spirited (via McGegan, as full of energy as ever), and a fine tribute to one who spent her life promoting brilliant, elegant, spirited Bach. Thanks to those who put this concert together; it made clearer than any number of verbal tributes could do what Laurette Goldberg did for music in the Bay Area. To paraphrase Christopher Wren's epitaph in St. Paul's: If you seek her monument, just look around you. Or, rather, listen.
(Michelle Dulak Thomson is a violinist and violist who has written about music for Strings, Stagebill, Early Music America,
and The New York Times.)
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Laurette Goldberg
