Organization

Conductor

John Eliot Gardiner

Singer

Soprano

Hilary Cronin

Assistant Conductor

James Halliday

Oscar Holch

Countertenor

Reginald Mobley

Mezzo-soprano

Bethany Horak-Hallett

Sarah Denbee

Tenor

Jonathan Hanley

Nick Pritchard

Bass

Alex Ashworth

Dingle Yandell

Orchestra

English Baroque Soloists

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Monteverdi Choir

Monteverdi Choir & Orchestras

American Tour October 2023 - Bach : Mass in B Minor

Montreal

Canada

Festival Bach Montréal

Place des Arts

Maison Symphonique

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Princeton

McCarter Theater Center

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Harris Theater for Music and Dance, Chicago

Mass in B minor, BWV 232 Bach, J. S. (+1 More)

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Mass in B minor, BWV 232

Approved

Bach: Mass in B - John Eliot Gardiner 80 - Mezzo 25

American Tour October 2023 - Bach : Mass in B Minor: Mass in B minor, BWV 232 Bach, J. S.

John Eliot Gardiner is considered one of the greatest living interpreters of J.S. Bach. His in-depth knowledge of Bach following a lifetime’s immersion has marked him out as a key figure in the most recent Bach scholarship. His book, Music in the Castle of Heaven: A Portrait of Johann Sebastian Bach, was published in 2013 to critical acclaim.

Bach put his Mass together at the end of his life, perhaps mindful of creating a lasting legacy, recycling pieces he had written in the previous decades and welding them together with new music, creating a compendium of all the different styles and approaches that he had taken during 30 or 40 years of music-making.

In his setting of the Latin text of the mass, Bach’s resolve was not merely to mime the gestures of belief, and to interpret doctrine via music of his own invention, but to extend the very range of music’s possibilities and through such exploration to make sense of the world in which he lived and whatever lay beyond it.

From the opening collective cry of ‘Kyrie’, to the winding fugues and ultimate radiance of ‘Dona nobis pacem’, the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists will reveal all the variety of a work which encompasses wild virtuosity, immeasurable pathos and exuberant joy. John Eliot Gardiner’s recordings (1985 and 2015) are regularly cited as benchmarks, revealing a changing approach to a work which rewards infinite exploration.

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Handel’s secular work L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato is one of his most inventive, varied and characteristically English works evoking contrasting emotions of the human condition, which creates a synergy of Enlightenment reason.

‘The sympathy with English life, English music and the English landscape, both rural and urban, makes L’Allegro the greatest tribute Handel ever paid to the land of his adoption.’ - John Eliot Gardiner

As a farmer passionate about the English Countryside, there is no one more suited to conduct Handel’s L’Allegro, il Penseroso et il Moderato than John Eliot Gardiner. Last recorded by the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists in 1981, we look forward to bringing a fresh perspective to this significant work.

L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato (1740) is one of Handel’s most unusual works. Despite its Italian title, it uses a completely English text, much of it written a century earlier by the 22-year-old poet John Milton, to explore the contrasting moods of Mirth (L’Allegro) and Melancholy (il Penseroso), eventually advocating a ‘middle way’ of Moderation. Milton’s poetry was suggested to Handel by his friend the philosopher James Harris, who set about rearranging the poems to create a convincing musical structure; Handel himself had the idea of a final section to unite Milton’s poems into ‘one Moral Design’. The libretto was refined by Charles Jennens (better known as the compiler of the text for Messiah).

This poetic allegory yielded some of Handel’s most inventive and colourful music. The text focuses on English rural and urban life that would have been familiar to Handel: milkmaids and shepherds, warbling birds, the cricket on the hearth, the ‘busy hum’ of ‘populous cities’, the thrill of the hunt, tongue-in-cheek references to theatrical performances of Ben Jonson and Shakespeare – all come to life thanks to the composer’s imaginative use of the orchestra and singers. The final ‘Moderato’ section culminates in one of Handel’s most sublime duets, evoking nothing less than the dawn of the age of Enlightenment.

This riotous variety of moods and images will be celebrated by the Monteverdi Choir and a team of brilliant young solo singers as well as by the English Baroque Soloists – the piece has notable solos for horn, flute, oboe, bassoon, organ, bells and cello.

English

American Tour October 2023 - Bach : Mass in B Minor by Bach, J. S., From (2023/2023), Conductor John Eliot Gardiner, Place des Arts, Montreal, Canada

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