| Date and venue | Title | Submitted by |
|---|---|---|
| 19-Nov-2012 Segerstrom Center for the Arts: Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall | John Eliot Gardiner enlightens with Beethoven's Missa Solemnis in Orange County | Matthew Richard Martinez |
 Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis is an odd piece. Despite having a rich recorded legacy, it is not a piece that one encounters often in the concert hall. The technical challenges of this music are up there with virtually any other piece of combined music for choir and orchestra. As performed by the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique and the Monteverdi Choir last night, its difficulty was dispatched with an awe-inspiring fervor.Read full review... | ||
| 16-Nov-2012 Carnegie Hall: Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage | John Eliot Gardiner's Beethoven 9 still shocks at Carnegie Hall | David Allen, unpredictableinevitability.com |
 As I walked to this concert by the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique and the Monteverdi Choir, I wondered what might have changed in Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s Beethoven in the two decades since he first recorded these symphonies. In the early 1990s the period-instrument movement was at its height, and the shock of the new (in the guise of the old) drew dividing lines between those who insisted that Beethoven needed to be played with original instruments at the composer’s set speeds, and those who believed in the importance of tradition.Read full review... | ||
| 15-Jul-2012 Royal Albert Hall | Prom 3: Sir John Eliot Gardiner conducts Pelléas et Mélisande | Laura Kate Wilson |
 Opera at the 2012 Proms began with a performance of Debussy’s only completed opera, Pelléas et Mélisande. Conducted by Sir John Eliot Gardiner, the production celebrated the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth, and marked the 24 years since Gardiner first brought the work to the Royal Albert Hall with the Opéra de Lyon. This time, he was conducting the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, a period orchestra he formed in 1990 with the purpose of accurately performing music of the 19th century.Read full review... | ||
| 9-Sep-2011 Royal Albert Hall | Two composers for the price of one - Der Freischütz at the Proms | Intermezzo |
 The overture to Der Freischütz is a familiar concert warm-up, but the opera itself is a rarer find these days. It wasn't always so. With over fifty performances in the eighteen months following its 1821 Berlin debut, Weber's spooky tale of souls traded for magic bullets was an instant hit. Its popularity in Paris was cemented by an early bowdlerised, Frenchified version which proved a huge influence on the young Berlioz, despite his reservations about the extensive changes made to pander to public taste.
Read full review... | ||
