2024-07-25 19:58:53
British conductor John Eliot Gardiner, one of the leading figures in the contemporary world of classical music and a pioneer in the field of historically informed interpretation, retires after six decades as artistic director of the Monteverdi Choir, the English Baroque Soloists and the Orchester Révolutionnaire et Romantique. He decided to do so after last year’s incident, when he hit a singer.
As reported by the AP agency, the 81-year-old Gardiner confirmed that “with a heavy heart” he decided to resign. He made the announcement about a year after the incident, which occurred at a festival in the town of La Côte-Saint-André in southeastern France.
Gardiner was conducting Hector Berlioz’s Trojans there at the time. However, twenty-nine-year-old bassist William Thomas left the stage on the wrong side during the applause.
According to The Times, Gardiner then confronted him backstage with a pint of beer in hand. The infamously temperamental conductor exclaimed that he would like to smash that glass over the singer’s head. The bass player warned him not to do that, after which the conductor slapped him and then punched him in the face, the paper claims.
Gardiner’s agency Askonas Holt did not confirm the exact description of the event, but admitted that “there was an incident”. The conductor immediately apologized publicly. “It was an inexcusable short-circuit, and I have personally apologized for it to Will Thomas, whom I hold in the highest esteem. I am doing so again now publicly, and at the same time I apologize to anyone I have disappointed with my behavior,” he said.
Gardiner subsequently took a year off from all appearances in the hope that this would be enough to revive his career. But that didn’t happen and now it’s finally ending.
Sir Gardiner performed, among other things, at the coronation of King Charles III. | Photo: Sim Canetty-Clarke
“Over the last 11 months I have been in intensive therapy. I have learned a tremendous amount about myself and how I have treated others in the past, and I have come to the conclusion that a change of course would be best for me and my orchestras,” he says Gardiner. He emphasizes that he is not retiring and intends to continue recording or conducting as a guest with other orchestras.
The world-renowned conductor, who was one of the first to rediscover the original colors of Baroque music and revived interest in early music in general, became famous, among other things, for his complete performance of Bach cantatas on an annual tour called the Bach Pilgrimage. In 2000, he celebrated the 250th anniversary of the composer’s death by performing all his church cantatas.
“With musicians and singers, Gardiner traveled from church to church, from Germany through Paris and Zurich to New York. Each cantata was performed on the day of the liturgical year for which it was composed by the author,” described critic Dita Hradecká.
The British native has received two Grammys, a Diapason d’Or award and more Gramophone magazine awards than any other living artist.
He worked at the Vienna State Opera and Milan’s La Scala, regularly guesting with the London Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Berlin Philharmonic. In 2021, he made his sixtieth appearance at the BBC Proms festival.
He also conducted the vocal ensemble Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists orchestra at last year’s coronation of King Charles III. in Westminster Abbey.
Holder of the Order of the British Empire and a knighthood, Gardiner, who also holds honorary doctorates from the Royal Academy of Music and King’s College in Cambridge, could also be seen several times by Czech listeners in recent years. In 2018, he performed a selection of cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach with the Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists at the Prague Spring Festival. He was applauded by the full Rudolfinum in Prague.
In the same place, in the first pandemic of 2020, Gardiner filmed an orchestra without an audience with the Czech Philharmonic and pianist Igor Ardashev, which could be seen on the iVysílní platform.
Gardiner again performed three times with the first Czech orchestra last year in a packed Rudolfinum. Their program featured a purely Czech repertoire, led by Antonín Dvořák’s Fifth Symphony, Josef Suk’s Fantasia in G minor for violin and orchestra, played by Jan Mráček, and Leopold Koželuh’s Symphony No. 5.
Video: Classical music has huge “balls” and nobody in it deals with gender, the conductor describes (September 15, 2023)
“It’s unfortunate when a female conductor tries to stylize herself as a man,” conductor Anna Novotná Pešková said in the Spotlight show. | Video: Blahoslav Baťa