John Eliot Gardiner, who celebrated his 80th birthday on April 20, will be in concert in Montreal, as a prelude to the Bach Festival, on October 27. Warner publishes a box containing all of its Erato recordings, a legacy that we had somewhat lost sight of and to which it is exciting to return.
Many images come to mind when one thinks of John Eliot Gardiner. Perhaps not that of his activity as gentleman farmer in Dorset. “I breed cows: Angus, but I also have 70 Aubrac heads. I love my cattle […] I feel very privileged to have this contact with the earth, nature and animals. It’s a perfect counterpoint to the music,” said the Figaro in May 2021 one of the musicians who were definitely not bored during the pandemic.
There were several turning points throughout John Eliot Gardiner’s career. One of the latest was his break with his record publisher Universal. The reason ? Gardiner wanted to undertake a musical pilgrimage with Bach and felt that the recording and publication of a complete set of Bach’s cantatas was his due. But the publisher has held back with four irons for very understandable economic reasons. The conductor therefore created the SDG (Soli Deo Gloria) label in 2005 in order to self-publish, first in Bach, then in Brahms, for example. Recordings that are more and more “locked up” in a sometimes icy interpretative system by dint of wanting to demonstrate a supposed interpretative truth.
Dream in Cambridge
In 2021, Universal released a box set of 104 CDs which we had decided to skip. Indeed, it included the Archiv and DG recordings, but not those published by Philips. It would have been wiser to unify the catalogs and to publish a vocal box and an instrumental box, or a baroque box and a classical-romantic box.
If we consider Mozart, for example, Gardiner recorded the piano concertos with Archiv, the symphonies with Philips, various operas with Archiv and the Masses at Phillips. As the Händel recordings were at Philips, in the end, less than a third of the box was devoted to baroque music.
This frustrating release makes Warner’s (64 CDs), which arrives this month, even more interesting. These Erato recordings of the English conductor form a coherent whole and give us relevant biographical and musical references.
John Eliot Gardiner was born in April 1943 in Dorset. Her father is an ardent defender of organic farming, her grandfather is an Egyptologist. Gustav Holst’s daughter is a friend of this family where everyone plays music and sings: “My father liked above all to sing perched on his horse or on his tractor”, declared the leader to The Express in 2010.
John Eliot enters Cambridge in history. But he begins to dream of giving the first audition of the Vespers of the Virgin by Monteverdi. He takes a sabbatical year to found the Monteverdi Choir, find orchestral musicians and finance everything. We are in 1964.
At the end of his studies at Cambridge, the historian chose the musical path and found himself for two years in Paris with Nadia Boulanger. He earns his living as an instrumentalist at the Concerts Colonne and Lamoureux and is interested in the archives of the National Library, where he is passionate about Rameau.
As often, Erato and its artistic director Michel Garcin will be on the lookout for this new talent. The first recording dates from February 1976: Music for Queen Mary de Purcell opens this box set of 64 CDs. At the time, John Eliot Gardiner conducted the “Monteverdi Choir Monteverdi Orchestra”. They are found in the Says Dominus and the Paths of Sion from Händel, and into Israel in Egypt of Händel in October 1978.
modern instruments
In these years 1976-1978, the choice of soloists is not yet unstoppable. Thus, in Dancethird entry of Hébé celebrations (1977) by Rameau, the caprine vibrato of tenor Jean-Claude Orliac is a bit awkward.
A confession from Gardiner to The Express in 2010 is fascinating a posteriori: “At the beginning, I had the Monteverdi Choir Orchestra… Everything was going well until 1979. There, we changed our name to become the English Baroque Soloists and we went from modern instruments to ancient instruments … It was a disaster! For many months I was tearing my hair out, I didn’t know where we were going. It just sounded bad. The level of the instrumentalists was very low. They were practically all self-taught and resented cohabitation with a virtuoso choir. The singers of the Monteverdi Choir were furious to see their colleagues leaving on modern instruments, replaced by others, technically inferior. »
It is hard to imagine this fledgling legend, this John Eliot Garder whom we know so sure of his facts, then walking on eggshells. In February 1979, Purcell recordings mixed the two orchestra names. However, it is difficult to distinguish qualitatively The Tempest And The Indian Queenwhere the English Baroque Soloists are doing very well, even if the approach is rather cautious.
A game-changing choir
With L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato of Händel, we are in January 1980. In April of the same year, Michel Garcin and John Eliot Gardiner will definitively impose the name of the Monteverdi Choir as an elite choral formation with the motets of Bach.
If we go back to the context of the time, the territory thus marked at less than 40 years by the English chef is major. The large active choirs are still of the Wiener Singverein type, with an inherent vocal heaviness. The style of Michel Corboz at the same time is more deferential and the Bach recordings of Harnoncourt and Leonhardt have a much more heterogeneous choral paste.
He will remain in the Gardiner-Erato partnership for ten years, as we enter the CD era. Gardiner sniffs out the windfall and will disperse with recordings at DG-Archiv, where he begins with Acis and Galathea of Händel from the creation of the English Baroque Soloists.
At Erato, Michel Garcin, feeling his catalog of recordings by Jean-François Paillard becoming obsolete at breakneck speed, had the enterprising conductor record Water Music and the Concerti grossi op. 3 by Händel, as well as overtures by Bach. There Water Music illustrates well the colors of the English Baroque Soloist, which are shaped and find their expression in theOde to Saint Cecilia by Purcell.
1982 is the major year of Boreads by Rameau, recorded in Aix-en-Provence. A sequel of Dardanusstrengthens the Ramist division that same year. Gardiner still has two major Handel projects in store for Erato: the oratorio Mixesthen the opera Tamerlano. Between the two, he engraves king arthurby Purcell with Paul Elliott, Jennifer Smith and Stephen Varcoe. At this point, the soloists are really in tune with the quality of the choir.
The Lyon era
In the wake of Boreads in Aix, Gardiner was appointed to the Opéra de Lyon, and one of the major interests of this set is to follow the deployment of the repertoire that ensues. Gardiner had only recorded two non-baroque CDs, intended for Alsatian scenes, picturesque, dramatic and magical by Massenet, in 1978. But from 1984, we witnessed a festival of important French recordings: The star by Chabrier, fortunio of Messenger and The brigands by Offenbach are still the benchmarks today. Gardiner, who had recorded Don Juan of Gluck, becomes the reference in the interpretation of this composer with Mecca pilgrims, Orpheus And Eurydice and Iphigenia in Aulide.
The disc of Bizet’s symphony also remains a reference, like the version of The childhood of Christ by Berlioz with Anne-Sofie von Otter, Anthony Rolfe-Johnson, Gilles Cachemaille, José van Dam and Jules Bastin. We are then in 1987, ten years after the debut of the conductor on the disc! To develop the Berliozian vein, and others, Gardiner will create in 1990 the Revolutionary and Romantic Orchestra, which he will have recorded in particular at Philips.
One of the jewels of this Lyon era will associate the Lyon institution with the Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists: it is Scylla and Glaucusa lyrical tragedy by Jean-Marie Leclair.
It is almost magical and great not having to delve into Gardiner’s opinions and visions of Beethoven, Brahms or Mozart, and just being able to tap into his energy and early enthusiasm to celebrate Bach, Händel, Purcell, Rameau and discover unknown French works.