This stunning new live recording of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion (Matthauspassion BWV 244) was recorded in Pisa Cathedral during the Anima Mundi Festival as part of the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestra’s 2016 tour. Conducted by Sir John Eliot Gardiner, the brilliant cast includes James Gilchrist as the Evangelist and Stephan Loges as Jesus. The Trinity Boys Choir adds an exciting color to this recording as well. The Monteverdi Choir was founded by Sir John Eliot Gardner in 1964. The ensemble’s first performance was the Monteverdi Vespers in King’s College Chapel, Cambridge. The group has become known worldwide for their stylistic conviction and their ability to perform an extensive repertoire, from Renaissance motets to Classical music of the Twentieth Century.

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REVIEW:

Musically this is a very fine performance. The choir are excellent, of course, with a solid but clear and intimate sound even in the larger choruses, no end of expressive means in the chorales, and a thrilling quickness in the crowd choruses. Gardiner asks for a lot of quiet singing from them and they execute it with a superbly controlled beauty.

The orchestra is as skilled and musical as you like in their obbligatos, and exquisitely responsive in Gardiner's subtle shapings.

The experienced Evangelist of James Gilchrist and Christus of Stephan Loges are not to be faulted, and none of the nine young aria soloists is a weak link; each one lives up to their moment in the drama.

All of these things you will find in many other Matthews, but you will rarely find the same careful relishing of the German text. What really makes this one special, however, is its emotional integrity, coming not from affected theatricality but from a pervading sense of profound sadness. This recording is one of Gardiner's finest achievements.

– Gramophone

Sir John Eliot Gardiner's personal curation of Easter Choral music inspired by his family's annual Easter Play at his home in Springhead, Dorset. A companion to the Monteverdi Choir's 1998 recording Once as I remember, which told the story of the Springhead Christmas Play. Structured around a series of tableaux, narrating through a combination of the different Gospel accounts, it is a dramatic retelling of the Resurrection story, employing disparate musical styles and frequent shifts of focus and perspective, all held together by the creative vision of a Dorset mother and her son. He writes: "This personal selection of music for Easter from the 11th to the 20th centuries tells the story of the Resurrection and Christ's appearances to his disciples. It is based on my experience of compiling and directing the music for a mimed Easter play, performed in village churches in Dorset every year between 1963 and 1984, the brainchild of my mother, Marabel Gardiner, to whose memory this recording is dedicated."

This is a disc of pure delight.

This brilliant release features a live recording of the Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique led by Sir John Elliot Gardiner performing Schubert’s Symphony No. 5 and Brahms’ Serenade No. 2 in A Major. The recorded concert took place in November 2016 inside the stunning acoustics of the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam. Schubert’s Symphony No. 5 was written mainly in September 1816 and was completed on October 3 of that same year just six months after the completion of his prior symphony. In character, the writing is often said to resemble Mozart; Schubert was infatuated with the composer at the time he composed it. Brahms’ second Serenade was written in 1859 and dedicated to Clara Schumann. The five movement work is scored for chamber orchestra, including double woodwinds but omitting violins, trumpets, trombones and percussion.

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REVIEW:

In matters of colour and timing, the playing of this early-Romantic repertoire has undergone its own revolution in the past 30 years. Under Goodman and Mackerras, even Minkowski, the Minuet of Schubert’s Fifth is neat but plain by comparison with Gardiner. Every phrase of the Andante is weighted and cherished. For its combination of tenderness, gravity and springtime joys, the performance may be set alongside Klemperer’s Philharmonia (with a first flute, Marlen Root, who has nothing to fear by comparison with Gareth Morris). The conclusion is quickly faded, but applause is retained after the Brahms. It’s a disc of pure delight.

– Gramophone

Monteverdi’s great opera is a celebration of unwavering devotion, conveyed in some of the composer’s most poignant, heart-breaking music. After two brutal decades of war, the weary Ulysses is washed up on the rocky shore of his home island of Ithaca. There, he discovers the hordes of depraved admirers who have beseiged his faithful wife Penelope in his 20-year absence – and launches into battle to win back her love. Monteverdi’s opera is a celebration of unwavering devotion, conveyed in some of the composer’s most poignant, heartbreaking music. John Eliot Gardiner leads an exemplary cast of world-class singers alongside the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists in this live recording from The National Forum of Music in Wroclaw, Poland – part of their critically acclaimed Monteverdi 450 tour in 2017.

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REVIEWS:

Faced with lots of recitative and practically no arias, singers and players abandon themselves to intense arioso, jazzy cross-rhythms between poetry and continuo, and take-no-prisoners dissonances. Furio Zanasi, Lucile Richardot, and Hana Blažiková bring a depth of acting almost without rival.

– BBC Music Magazine

Recitatives flicker and spark with detail. Instrumental textures are spare and speeds swift, and there’s a welcome sense of narrative drive. Text is king, but it’s the rhetoric of the English Baroque Soloists that really counts. Zanasi is a smooth, patrician Uliss. There are more classically beautiful accounts of Il ritorno d’Ulisse available, but perhaps none with quite so much life.

– Gramophone

The Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists celebrate Christmas with a mixed programme of J.S. Bach’s sacred choral works. As we approach the 500th Anniversary of the Lutheran Church, these works transport listeners to 18th-century Leipzig for a traditional Christmas celebration. The programme moves from the intimacy of “Süßer Trost” to the vast celebration of joy that is Bach's Magnificat. The Bach at Christmas project is dedicated to the memory of philanthropist and patron of the Monteverdi choir, Sir Ralph Kohn. The concerts from which these recordings were taken took place at the Alte Oper, Frankfurt, in December of 2016.