The first 20 minutes of music from the coronation of King Carlos IIIon May 6, will sound under the baton of the internationally renowned conductor sir John Eliot Gardiner.
The musician became friends with the king after meeting at an event in Sandringham. And it is that, in addition to classical music, they are both united by their interest in sustainable agriculture.
According to Buckingham Palace, Sir John Eliot would conduct The Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists in a pre-service program of choral music on Saturday May 6 at Westminster Abbey in London. “He very generously asked me to do the first 20 minutes when everyone has arrived and is in his seat, but before he himself arrives in his carriage,” the veteran musician has recounted.
“It will be a kind of mini-concert before the coronation. We will do our 20 minutes and then we will have to leave quite quickly to let the choir of the abbey come in and take our place in the choir stalls,” he explained, before concluding, ” It is a wonderful honor for me to kick off the festivities with some very beautiful classical music.”
Knight since 1998
Sir John Eliot Gardiner was knighted for his services to music in the 1998 queen’s birthday honorsand it was the then Prince Charles who granted it to him.
The king has visited up to three times the farm that the director has near Fontmell Magna. “He used to come here occasionally because our farm near Shaftesbury is on a direct route from Highgrove to Poundbury. I showed him my cattle and he liked it so I decided to give him a couple of heifers for his 60th birthday,” he recalled.
“When he knighted me, he leaned forward with his sword and said to me: ‘Thanks for the heifers'”has finished.
On tour in Barcelona
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Just a few days ago, the British conductor celebrated his 80th birthday by performing Johann Sebastian Bach’s ‘Misa in B minor’ at the Palau de la Música Catalana, in Barcelona, as part of the international tour he has organized to celebrate this occasion and the cycle ‘Palau 100’.
Throughout his extensive career, Gardiner, regarded as one of the greatest living interpreters of Bach’s workhas achieved enormous international recognition and is the founder and artistic director of the Monteverdi Choir, the English Baroque Soloists and the Revolutionary and Romantic Orchestra.