John Eliot Gardiner’s “Bach Motets” wins acclaim
The recording of J.S. Bach’s motets by Sir John Eliot Gardiner and the Monteverdi Choir, released in the U.S. in June, is the latest offering from their SDG label to garner wide recognition, including Recording of the Month in the August issue of Gramophone. The magazine’s review declared: “Gardiner challenges orthodoxy in these a cappella holy grails with persuasive passion and genuine zeal. High-wire artist Philippe Petit is a fitting album cover image to this important landmark, with its highly recommended, high-stakes performances.”
In its review, the UK’s Independent said: “Taking a detour from their monumental multi-volume presentation of the complete Bach cantatas, John Eliot Gardiner and the Monteverdi Choir turn their attention to the six Bach motets, which offer the same compelling attractions of fugue and counterpoint as the composer’s keyboard works, applied to the more emotive wonders of the human voice. … ‘Lobet den Herrn, alle Heiden’ opens proceedings in a cascade of interlacing lines, the voices braided in a bouncing play, which reaches hypnotic levels in the eight round-like repetitions of lines in ‘Komm, Jesu, komm,’ before the 20-minute ‘Jesu, meine Freude’ furnishes the album’s complex centerpiece. Utterly sublime.”
Like Gramophone, the Guardian also used the album cover’s high-wire image to underscore the adventurous spirit in these performances, adding: “John Eliot Gardiner’s wonderfully measured and subtle approach to these miniature masterpieces emphasizes their dance-like joy, and his virtuosic choir responds with glowing warmth and clarity. Their glorious reading of ‘Komm, Jesu, komm’ is alone worth the price of the disc.” The Financial Times also chimed in, saying: “The motets are more madrigal-like than the cantatas and Passions, revealing the composer’s dance-like joy in the praise of God (even when the occasion for their performance was sombre) and expressing just as effectively his gift for contrapuntal tapestry. The vital factor is to make the words live, and few are better qualified than the Monteverdi Choir, under Gardiner’s inspired direction.”
Gardiner and Monteverdi Choir tour Beethoven
Looking ahead to autumn, Gardiner will conduct the Monteverdi Choir and the period-instrument Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique on a major European and U.S. tour, performing Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis from September through November. The Missa Solemnis is a signature work for the team; its 1991 Archiv/DG recording won the Gramophone Record of the Year Award. The tour takes in concerts at Carnegie Hall, one of which will also offer Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. In the fall, SDG will release a recording of Beethoven’s Symphonies Nos. 5 and 7, recorded live by WQXR at Carnegie last year.
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 praise 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 a celebrated 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. In spring 2012, Gardiner, the Monteverdi Choir and the 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. This summer, Gardiner and the Monteverdi Choir – recently named the world’s best choir by Gramophone magazine – presented a program of English polyphony on tour in the UK, France, and at the Salzburg Festival; works by Taverner, Byrd, White, and others were recorded for future release by SDG.
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, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Bavarian Radio Symphony, and the Czech Philharmonic. Formerly artistic director of Opéra de Lyon, Gardiner has, since 2006, conducted new productions of Carmen, Pelléas et Mélisande, Chabrier’s L’Étoile, and the Weber-Berlioz Le Freyschütz at the Opéra Comique in Paris. In March and April, he conducted Rigoletto at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; in June he led a performance of Berlioz’s Requiem at the Festival de Saint-Denis with the Monteverdi Choir and the Orchestre National de France. This summer, Gardiner led 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. In another concert at the Salzburg Festival, he led the Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists in Haydn’s The Creation. At London’s Royal Albert Hall this month, Gardiner conducted 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.
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 the 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), 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 nominated Commandeur dans l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France in 1996 and was made Chevalier de la Légion d’ Honneur in 2010.
John Eliot Gardiner: autumn Beethoven tour
Sept 28
Pisa, Italy: Cattedrale Duomo
Monteverdi Choir / Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique
Beethoven: Missa Solemnis
Sept 30
Köln, Germany: Kölner Philharmonie
Monteverdi Choir / Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique
Beethoven: Missa Solemnis
Oct 1
Amsterdam, the Netherlands: Concertgebouw
Monteverdi Choir / Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique
Beethoven: Missa Solemnis
Oct 3
Luxembourg: Philharmonie
Monteverdi Choir / Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique
Beethoven: Missa Solemnis
Oct 5
Baden-Baden, Germany: Festspielhaus
Monteverdi Choir / Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique
Beethoven: Missa Solemnis
Oct 8
Paris, France: Salle Pleyel
Monteverdi Choir / Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique
Beethoven: Missa Solemnis
Oct 13
Vienna, Austria: Konzerthaus
Monteverdi Choir / Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique
Beethoven: Missa Solemnis
Oct 15
Budapest, Hungary: Bela Bartók National Concert Hall
Monteverdi Choir / Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique
Beethoven: Missa Solemnis
Oct 17
London, U.K.: Barbican Hall
Monteverdi Choir / Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique
Beethoven: Missa Solemnis
Nov 10
Valencia, Spain: Palau de la Música
Monteverdi Choir / Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique
Beethoven: Missa Solemnis
Nov 14
Chapel Hill, NC: Carolina Performing Arts Center
Monteverdi Choir / Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique
Beethoven: Missa Solemnis
Nov 16
New York, NY: Carnegie Hall
Monteverdi Choir / Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique
Beethoven: Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt
Beethoven: Symphony No. 9
Nov 17
New York, NY: Carnegie Hall
Monteverdi Choir / Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique
Beethoven: Missa Solemnis
Nov 19
Costa Mesa, CA: Segerstrom Concert Hall
Monteverdi Choir / Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique
Beethoven: Missa Solemnis
Nov 20
Costa Mesa, CA: Segerstrom Concert Hall
Monteverdi Choir / Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique
Beethoven: Symphony No. 9
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