Sir John Eliot Gardiner
Chef d’orchestre
As a key figure in historically informed performance practice, Sir John Eliot Gardiner led the original sound ensembles he founded to success around the world and is also a welcome guest of top international orchestras. In September 1997, he also conducted the Berliner Philharmoniker for the first time at the Berliner Festspiele.
Sir John Eliot Gardiner is internationally regarded as one of the most innovative conductors of our time. His work with the Monteverdi Choir, the English Baroque Soloists and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, of which he is the founder and artistic director, have made him a pioneer in historical performance practice. Gardiner conducts music from the 16th to the 20th century. He has conducted opera productions at the Royal Opera House, Wiener Staatsoper and the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, and was musical director of the Opéra National de Lyon from 1983 to 1988, where he founded a new orchestra that is now one of the best in France. An expert on the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, Gardiner published the book [Music in the Castle of Heaven: A Portrait of Johann Sebastian Bach] in October 2013, which won the Prix des Muses of the Singer-Polignac Foundation. In 2014, he became the first foundation president of the Leipzig Bach Archive and was the first Christoph Wolff Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Harvard University in 2014/15. Gardiner is an honorary member of the Royal Academy of Music, King’s College London, the British Academy and King’s College Cambridge. He was appointed Commander of the British Empire in 1990, and in 2005 he received the German Federal Cross of Merit 1st Class.
