John Eliot Gardiner releases recording of “Bach Motets” on June 12
Sir John Eliot Gardiner – the recipient of more Gramophone Awards than any other living artist and recently inducted as one of 50 inaugural members of the magazine’s Hall of Fame – and the Monteverdi Choir have released their new recording of Johann Sebastian Bach motets on their SDG label. The CD will be available in the US on June 12 (it is already available in Europe and on the Monteverdi Choir’s web site). The Bach Motets recording follows in the footsteps of Gardiner and company’s epic, widely revered series of Bach’s sacred cantatas on the same label. The Monteverdi Choir was recently voted the world’s best choir by Gramophone, and Le Monde declared: “If there were a Nobel Prize for choirs, the Monteverdi Choir should be its laureate.” Reviewing concerts at St. John Smith’s Square in London recorded for the motets release, The Times said: “If all the world’s depressed people had somehow been squeezed into St John’s to hear this concert, the pharmaceutical companies would be out of business. Who needs pills to lift the spirits when we have the six Bach motets and John Eliot Gardiner’s Monteverdi Choir to sing them?” The Evening Standard observed: “Precision, purity of tone, strong rhythmic definition, clear diction…Bach’s Motets are ideally suited to the Monteverdi Choir.” The Guardian added, “The Monteverdi Choir was on supreme form.”
As well as a rich and storied lineage, the motets also have great personal significance to Gardiner. He says:
The Bach motets are rare moments of music that have survived since his death. Nearly all the cantatas were forgotten; the B Minor Mass was forgotten for many years. Mendelssohn was the first to revive the St. John Passion and St. Matthew Passion in 1827 and 1828, long after Bach’s death. But the motets somehow stood their place in the musical literature, particularly in the repertoire of the Thomaskirche in Leipzig. Mozart, who was traveling through Leipzig in 1789, heard the choir of St. Thomas singing ‘Singet dem Herrn,’ which is the most ebullient of the Bach motets. He said, ‘This is something that one can learn from.’ Legend has it that he asked for the score, and there was none, just a series of parts; so he put the eight parts on the floor and, being Mozart, he was able to piece it together and read it in his head. He said, ‘My God, that’s something special.’ Those motets have been my yearly companions ever since I was a kid. Jesu, meine Freude was one of the first pieces I ever conducted, at the age of 15. I first recorded them for Erato in the late ’70s, and we performed them all through the Cantata Pilgrimage in 2000 as fill-ins between cantatas. We decided to do a tour in 2011 of the Bach motets with the Monteverdi Choir, so we recorded them again.
Asked about the cover art for the new album, which pictures Philippe Petit, the famous high-wire walker, Gardiner emphasized the extraordinary dexterity required by the choir in performing the motets, saying, “This is truly acrobatic music.”
The new Motets album has quickly become a best seller on Gramophone’s Classical Specialist Chart and, in fact, recently claimed the #1 spot. The critics, meanwhile, are lining up to share superlatives. The Independent calls it “utterly sublime,” and the Observer is similarly effusive: “John Eliot Gardiner’s wonderfully measured and subtle approach to these miniature masterpieces emphasizes their dance-like joy and his choir responds with glowing warmth and clarity.” The Sunday Times, praising the record, writes: “There is no more masterly or more beautiful music, and John Eliot Gardiner and his Monteverdi Choir do it noble justice.”
Gardiner’s earlier Bach recordings with the choir received similar praise. Discussing the appeal of the 27-volume live series of Bach sacred cantatas released by SDG, The Times of London said: “Gardiner’s 2000 Bach Pilgrimage volumes are very addictive. No studio renderings can match them for immediacy, and their revelations are many. The general eloquence is overwhelming…You feel you were there, and it’s thrilling.” SDG recently released a Brahms series, matching his four symphonies and Ein deutsches Requiem with works by composers who influenced him, such as Schütz and Schubert. The recordings feature Gardiner conducting the period-instrument Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique and Monteverdi Choir, and the reviews have been stellar. In particular, the Financial Times declared: “At last we are hearing Brahms with a difference.” SDG will record the program of English polyphony music (featuring works of Taverner, Byrd, White and others) that Gardiner and the Monteverdi Choir will tour in June and July in the UK and Europe.
Gardiner, the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique are also looking ahead to a major European and U.S. tour of Beethoven’s Missa solemnis from September through November. The Missa solemnis is a signature work for the team, with its 1991 Archiv/DG recording winning the Gramophone Record of the Year Award. The tour entails concerts at Carnegie Hall that will also include Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. Also in the fall, SDG will release a recording of Beethoven’s Symphonies Nos. 5 and 7, captured live last November at Carnegie Hall by WQXR.
Soli Deo Gloria
SDG was created in 2005 with the aim to release more than 50 live recordings made in 2000 during the Monteverdi Choir’s Bach Cantata Pilgrimage, an event that celebrated the Millennium with performances of Bach’s sacred cantatas around the world. Shortly after the label’s launch, its first release won Record of the Year at the Gramophone Awards, and all subsequent releases have won international acclaim for the performances by John Eliot Gardiner conducting his Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists. At the behest of the Bach Archive in Leipzig, SDG then released the first recording of a newly discovered piece by J.S. Bach, Alles mit Gott. The label also made headlines with a CD of two Mozart symphonies, recorded live during a concert at London’s Cadogan Hall and released at the end of the evening. Another special recording project, “Pilgrimage to Santiago,” followed an acclaimed concert tour along the route to Compostela and received as much praise as the concerts themselves.
Autumn 2007 saw the first SDG recordings with the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, recorded at the Royal Festival Hall in London and the Salle Pleyel in Paris during the “Brahms and his Antecedents” concert cycle, yielding a five-album series. The label has also issued live recordings of Bach’s St. John Passion and music by Johann Christoph Bach. This fall, SDG will release a six-CD boxed set drawn from the Bach cantata series, including the popular Christmas Cantatas. Earlier this month, Gardiner, the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists recorded live concerts of Bach’s Ascension Cantatas, so as to provide an appendix to the Pilgrimage series that will serve as SDG’s 28th and final volume of his sacred cantatas.
John Eliot Gardiner
Regarded as one of the most versatile conductors of our time, John Eliot Gardiner appears regularly with such leading symphony orchestras as the London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Bavarian Radio Symphony and Czech Philharmonic. Formerly artistic director of Opéra de Lyon, Gardiner has, since 2006, conducted new productions of Carmen, Pelléas et Mélisande, Chabrier’s L’Etoile and the Weber-Berlioz Le Freyschutz at the Opéra Comique in Paris. This March and April, he conducted Rigoletto at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. In June, Gardiner leads the Monteverdi Choir in a program of English polyphony on tour in the U.K. and France, along with a July performance at the Salzburg Festival. He conducts Berlioz’s Grande Messe des morts at the Festival de Saint-Denis in June with the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestre National de France. At London’s Royal Albert Hall in July, Gardiner conducts a concert performance of Pelléas et Mélisande with the Monteverdi Choir and, in a first for London with the opera, the period-instrument Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique. Also in July at the Salzburg Festival, he leads the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists in Haydn’s The Creation.
Acknowledged as a key figure in the early-music revival of the past four decades, Gardiner is the founder and artistic director of the period-instrument Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique and English Baroque Soloists, as well as the Monteverdi Choir. With these ensembles, he has undertaken a number of ambitious large-scale tours; upcoming projects include a musical journey in 2014 that retraces the old pilgrimage route from Canterbury to Rome – the Via Francigena – with a cappella music of the 15th & 16th centuries. The extent of Gardiner’s repertoire is illustrated by more than 250 recordings he has made for major labels and by numerous international awards, including Gramophone magazine’s Special Achievement Award for his live recordings of J.S. Bach’s sacred cantatas. As the recipient of more Gramophone Awards than any other living artist, Gardiner was recently inducted as one of the 50 inaugural members of the Gramophone Hall of Fame.
In recognition of his work, Gardiner has received several international prizes, along with honorary doctorates from the University of Lyon, the New England Conservatory of Music and the University of Cremona. In 1992, he became an Honorary Fellow of both King’s College London and the Royal Academy of Music, and he was made a Visiting Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge in 2007-2008. In 1990, he was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) and then a Knight Bachelor in the 1998 Queen’s Birthday Honours List. In 2008, he was awarded the Royal Academy of Music / Kohn Foundation’s prestigious Bach Prize. He was named Commandeur dans l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France in 1996 and was made Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur in 2010.
Sir John Eliot Gardiner and 21C Media Group
21C Media Group was founded in January 2000, and one of the major projects in its first year involved promoting Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s Bach Cantatas Pilgrimage, a celebration of both the new millennium and the 250th anniversary of Bach’s death. The team at 21C Media Group is delighted and honored to be working again with Maestro Gardiner, his musicians and the SDG label.
John Eliot Gardiner: upcoming performances
June 8
Toulouse, France: Cathédrale Saint-Étienne de Toulouse
Monteverdi Choir
English polyphony: Taverner, Byrd, White, et al.
June 10
Versailles, France: Château de Versailles Spectacles
Monteverdi Choir
English polyphony: Taverner, Byrd, White, et al.
June 16
Aldeburgh, U.K.: Snape Maltings Concert Hall
Monteverdi Choir
English polyphony: Taverner, Byrd, White, et al.
June 18
London, U.K.: Christ Church, Spitalfields
Monteverdi Choir
English polyphony: Taverner, Byrd, White, et al.
June 28-30
Saint-Denis, France: Basilique Cathédrale
Monteverdi Choir / Choeur de Radio France / Orchestre National de France
Berlioz: Requiem
July 15
London, U.K.: Royal Albert Hall
Monteverdi Choir / Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique
Philip Addis (Pelléas), Karen Vourc’h (Mélisande), Laurent Naouri (Golaud), John Tomlinson (Arkel)
Debussy: Pelléas et Mélisande
July 20
Salzburg, Austria: Grosses Festspielhaus
Monteverdi Choir / English Baroque Soloists
Haydn: The Creation
July 21
Salzburg, Austria: Kollegienkirche
Monteverdi Choir
English polyphony: Taverner, Byrd, White, et al.
September 28
Pisa, Italy: Cattedrale Duomo
Monteverdi Choir / Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique
Beethoven: Missa solemnis
September 30
Köln, Germany: Kölner Philharmonie
Monteverdi Choir / Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique
Beethoven: Missa solemnis
October 1
Amsterdam, the Netherlands: Concertgebouw
Monteverdi Choir / Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique
Beethoven: Missa solemnis
October 3
Luxembourg: Philharmonie
Monteverdi Choir / Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique
Beethoven: Missa solemnis
October 5
Baden-Baden, Germany: Festspielhaus
Monteverdi Choir / Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique
Beethoven: Missa solemnis
October 8
Paris, France: Salle Pleyel
Monteverdi Choir / Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique
Beethoven: Missa solemnis
October 13
Vienna, Austria: Konzerthaus
Monteverdi Choir / Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique
Beethoven: Missa solemnis
October 15
Budapest, Hungary: Béla Bartók National Concert Hall
Monteverdi Choir / Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique
Beethoven: Missa solemnis
October 17
London, U.K.: Barbican Hall
Monteverdi Choir / Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique
Beethoven: Missa solemnis
November 10
Valencia, Spain: Palau de la Música
Monteverdi Choir / Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique
Beethoven: Missa solemnis
November 14
Chapel Hill, NC: Carolina Performing Arts Center
Monteverdi Choir / Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique
Beethoven: Missa solemnis
November 16
New York, NY: Carnegie Hall
Monteverdi Choir / Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique
Beethoven: Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt
Beethoven: Symphony No. 9
November 17
New York, NY: Carnegie Hall
Monteverdi Choir / Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique
Beethoven: Missa solemnis
November 19
Costa Mesa, CA: Segerstrom Concert Hall
Monteverdi Choir / Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique
Beethoven: Missa solemnis
November 20
Costa Mesa, CA: Segerstrom Concert Hall
Monteverdi Choir / Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique
Beethoven: Symphony No. 9
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