John Eliot Gardiner Beethoven

John Eliot Gardiner's interpretation of the Missa Solemnis stands as one of the crowning accomplishments of his career and one of the most impressive achievements of the period-instrument movement. The concept is grand and powerful, lively though not unduly brisk. The execution is simply electrifying: Gardiner has the orchestra on the edge of their seats, the chorus going all-out, and sparks flying everywhere. Excellent singing from the soloists and a vivid recording complete the triumph, and it's all on a single disc.

Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s Complete Beethoven Recordings made for Archiv Produktion have been brought together for the first time to mark Beethoven’s 250th birthday in 2020. This 15-CD set features the Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique and the Monteverdi Choir under the leadership of John Eliot Gardiner with soloists Robert Levin and Viktoria Mullova in the Piano and Violin Concertos. The Complete Beethoven Recordings include a bonus disc, never before commercially released, featuring an interview with Gardiner discussing the symphonies, and new liner notes written by Thomas Otto.

Soli Deo Gloria is proud to release the last instalment of its successful Brahms Symphony series which sees John Eliot Gardiner and his Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique explore the music of Johannes Brahms. This album is a celebration of the Fourth Symphony and the various pieces that contributed to its making.

Mendelssohn was not like Beethoven or Verdi–his second thoughts were not always better than his first. In fact, not one of the changes he made in his 1834 revision to the Italian Symphony–recorded here for the first time, alongside the original version of 1833–strikes me as an improvement; indeed, the later effort sounds more like a first draft, thinner, more repetitive, melodically less engaging. Nonetheless, it's good to have the composer's refashioning of the score on disc, especially when it's performed as confidently as here, if only to give us a renewed appreciation of what he achieved the first time around. For the familiar version of the Italian Symphony is certainly a masterpiece. And the performance it receives here from the Vienna Philharmonic and John Eliot Gardiner is one of the best currently available: polished and energetic, with plenty of the elegance one expects in Mendelssohn, even when he's at his most animated.

Robert Levin’s recordings of the Beethoven concertos with Gardiner and the Orchestre Révolutionaire et Romantique brought us yet another step closer to hearing this music as Beethoven imagined it. Five different contemporaneous fortepianos (or copies) are used, which Levin plays with great authority. While their sound is considerably lighter and drier than that of a modern concert grand, they are capable of producing a wide range of dynamics, and their action allows for dazzlingly clean articulation of scales and passage work.

Robert Levin has some fascinating ideas about this music. He improvises cadenzas and lead-ins, embellishes the last movement of the Third Concerto, and generally plays with a kind of expressive freedom uncommon in period-instrument performances. That's all to the good, as is the energy and power of the orchestra's playing. But although the musicians obviously approved the balances of the recording (or it wouldn't have been issued), the fortepianos often sound as though they're being heard through the wrong end of an audio telescope, and you, too, often have to strain to hear what's going on.

Deutsche Grammophon presents a complete survey of Sir John Eliot Gardiner's recordings for Achiv Produktion and DG. Orchestras & Choirs: Monteverdi Choir, the English Baroque Soloists, the Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantic, the Wiener Philharmoniker, NDR-Chor, NDR Sinfonieorchester, and the London Symphony Orchestra. Soloists include: Anne Sofie von Otter, Ian Bostridge, Barbara Bonney, Emma Kirkby, Mark Padmore, Bernarda Fink, Magdalena Kozena, Bryn Terfel, and many more.