John Eliot Gardiner - the pros and cons...

[Nick Armstrong]

[Re: St Matthew Passion BAL, 7.4.12]

I must say I find Gardiner's recording far too hard-driven, theatrical rather than spiritual and hence missing the point albeit - true - extraordinary and a technical tour-de-force. Same goes for his other large-scale Bach. I tried them all when they came out, but returned them all - they left me cold and rather irritated.

[BBMmk2]

John Eliot Gardiner - the pros and cons...

[Re: B Minor Mass BAL, 11.2.17]

Didn't like JEGGER's DG recording then?


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[Nick Armstrong]

Didn't like JEGGER's DG recording then?

No! and I'm with him on that. I've never liked Gardiner's way with the big Bach works, tried them when they came out and all went back to the shop! Each time I hear extracts, they seem increasingly misconceived. It's very odd, because he seems to approach individual cantatas very differently - much of the 'Pilgrimage' cycle is marvellous.

[Richard Barrett]

No! and I'm with him on that. I've never liked Gardiner's way with the big Bach works, tried them when they came out and all went back to the shop! Each time I hear extracts, they seem increasingly misconceived. It's very odd, because he seems to approach individual cantatas very differently - much of the 'Pilgrimage' cycle is marvellous.

That's an interesting point of view. Do you think it's because the cantata recordings capture a live performance rather than being put together piecemeal in a studio?

[Nick Armstrong]

That's an interesting point of view. Do you think it's because the cantata recordings capture a live performance rather than being put together piecemeal in a studio?

Last night I listened to most of Parrott's Mass in B minor. Very impressive indeed. But more than anything else it made me realise that I could listen to this work almost endlessly.

Listening to the Parrott now, as it happens. Yes - if 'inexhaustible' ever applies to music, it applies to this piece.

Re: JEG - you may be right. Also it seems to me that he feels the need to make something "big" of the Mass and the Passions, which for him equates to making them more driven, theatrical, almost lurid. Nick Kenyon's word "relentless" seems about right to me. Whereas the cantatas with their more intimate feel bring out a different sort of music-making, and the music is allowed to speak for itself.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I think the "relentless" comment was directed (quite rightly, I thought) at the more recent JEGgers recording, rather than the DG - which I used to enjoy a lot more tha n I have done the past couple of times I've listened to it.

For the Live cantata recordings, I'm my usual cussed self - I didn't really like listening to them on CD, but watching the exact same performances on youTube videos I found immensely satisfying. Sometimes I exasperate myself!

[vinteuil]

For the Live cantata recordings, I'm my usual cussed self - I didn't really like listening to them on CD, but watching the exact same performances on youTube videos I found immensely satisfying. Sometimes I exasperate myself!

... the answer is to use the youTube videos, but to keep your eyes closed.

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I agree with the views above regarding John-Eliot Gardiner.

When I first encountered his work in Bach and then Mozart I was exhilarated - I thought "Things don't get better than this!"

Time passes: I listen again, I discover Jacobs, Harnoncourt, Herreweghe, Kuijken, Bruggen - and I find J-E G again and again to be 'relentless', driven to the exclusion of breathing space, razor-sharp but curiously heartless.

I find I listen to him less and less. (Tho' I still enjoy his Bach Cantatas from the 'pilgrimage' box.)

[BBMmk2]

Listening to the Parrott now, as it happens. Yes - if 'inexhaustible' ever applies to music, it applies to this piece.

Re: JEG - you may be right. Also it seems to me that he feels the need to make something "big" of the Mass and the Passions, which for him equates to making them more driven, theatrical, almost lurid. Nick Kenyon's word "relentless" seems about right to me. Whereas the cantatas with their more intimate feel bring out a different sort of music-making, and the music is allowed to speak for itself.

I always thought especially with the St Matthew passion, that it was theatre?(Not necessarily the Mass in B minor)

[Nick Armstrong]

I find J-E G again and again to be 'relentless' ... curiously heartless.

I find I listen to him less and less. (Tho' I still enjoy his Bach Cantatas from the 'pilgrimage' box.)

Yes 'heartless' is a word that's occurred to me too.

Funnily enough though, my most recent purchase is his Midsummer Night's Dream music, the new LSO release from the concert last February. Lots of heart and delicacy there (Perhaps we should have a JEG thread - or resurrect one, if there has been already...)

[Nick Armstrong]

John Eliot Gardiner - the pros and cons...

This thread was triggered by some recent comments on JEG on the recent Bach B Minor Mass BAL. There seems to be room for a wider discussion of people's reactions to the performances of all sorts of music by this mainstay of the British concert and recording world....

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

OK

JEG is a conductor I greatly admire. HIPP without a personal point to prove. He may be a bit Toscanini-like, but he's not one to climb up the greasy pole.

[Richard Tarleton]

And I have huge admiration for a man who combines his busy conducting life with being a hands-on Dorset farmer - he has hinterland, literally and metaphorically. I'm not keen on that Mandarin jacket with the green cuffs, though.

The first time I saw him live was on the Pilgrimage tour, at St David's Cathedral - BVW 113, 179 and 199, with Mark Padmore and the future Mrs Rattle. A conductor of parts - his Simon Boccanegra at ROH was very fine. Not the latest, but I love the 1972 Monteverdi Vespers.

[Richard Barrett]

HIPP without a personal point to prove.

I think there'd be a few people who'd disagree with either or both parts of that sentence!

There are some recordings of his which I keep returning to, and everything he does is worth hearing, but others which seem as if his idea of historically-informed performance is sometimes to replace Romantic accretions with spiky Stravinskyan ones. I'm very fond of his recordings of Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann and Berlioz but often when it comes to earlier music he will for example have the strings play with minimal vibrato but with much more "modern" dynamics and phrasing, as if he's aiming at HIPP for people who don't really like HIPP.

[vinteuil]

... as if he's aiming at HIPP for people who don't really like HIPP.

That is a bit cruel, but perhaps contains more than a little truth.

If I've rather gone off him in Bach and Mozart, I have much enjoyed his Gluck operas - and he is great fun in lighter stuff like Chabrier's l'Etoile and Rossini's le Comte Ory...

[Richard Barrett]

and he is great fun in lighter stuff like Chabrier's l'Etoile and Rossini's le Comte Ory...

I'll take your word for that! Something else of his I like a lot is The Rake's Progress. I would be happy to hear him perform more neoclassical Stravinsky - it seems to me to suit his musical sensibilities very well.

On a different subject there's his book about Bach, Music in the Castle of Heaven. I enjoyed reading this. I think anyone would come out of reading it feeling they have more insight into Bach and his music than they did before, especially about the cantatas, although JEG seems to have no interest in saying anything about the OVPP debate, which is surely a glaring omission. I have the impression that he really knows that Bach's vocal music was performed with a much smaller ensemble than the one he uses, but he's invested too much time and energy in his choral way of looking at things to change now.