John Eliot Gardiner - the pros and cons...

[eighthobstruction]

I confess to having been a touch bemused on reading your post ...

....but then ??

[vinteuil]

I confess to having been a touch bemused on reading your post ...

... possibly 'urban dictionary' might be your friend here -

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=spite%20store

Though no-one wd suggest that this for3 forum is a 'spite store' following the BBC Radio 3 boards - nor yet R3ok....

[Ein Heldenleben]

Which raises the obvious question of what happens to Gardniner's new band, and anyone who jumps ships to it, when he does retire to his farm. Will it ever be anything more than a JEG vehicle, destined to exit the scene when he does, or does his ego entertain the possibility of anointing a loyal successor? With spoiler concerts lined up in direct competition with the MCO, some cynic on Slipped Disc has made a rather apt comparison with the 'spite stores' on Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Brilliant.
The Curb episode where Larry is accused of being a traitor to the Jewish faith by whistling the Siegfreid Idyll and then conducts a revenge live performance of the Mastersingers Overture at 3 in the morning on the complainer’s lawn is one of the great moments in TV comedy.

[Ein Heldenleben]

... possibly 'urban dictionary' might be your friend here -

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=spite%20store

Though no-one wd suggest that this for3 forum is a 'spite store' following the BBC Radio 3 boards - nor yet R3ok....

No a spite store would be our own classic radio channel..

[french frank]

Though no-one wd suggest that this for3 forum is a 'spite store' following the BBC Radio 3 boards - nor yet R3ok....

Heh, heh! Well we set this one up with a couple of weeks notice (having enquired whether the move would be welcomed) when the BBC announced the R3 messageboards were to be closed. Must admit, though, that our first attempt was when R3 tried to control what programmes listeners were allowed to discuss (not Choral Evensong, for example, though we could discuss Breakfast and In Tune because they were live and offered the possibility of messageboard comments being- selectively - 'fed into' the programmes. Any link to the new FoR3 website (no forum then) was removed as it broke the BBC's rules on 'commercial' (!!!) advertising. Except when the advertiser was either the BBC or an official BBC contributor.

R3ok spiked our guns because someone set up that rival board to the R3 messageboards while we were still trying to set up R3 forum Mk 1. As by that time most of the dissatisfied messageboarders had decamped to r3ok, our effort folded after a couple of years. Our second attempt has been rather longer-lived. But spite? Not us!

Returning to our muttons: I'd say it was JEG who 'wouldn't let matters drop' by, within a couple of months, starting up his new outfits, at the age of 81, shadowing the existing ensembles.

[Master Jacques]

Returning to our muttons: I'd say it was JEG who 'wouldn't let matters drop' by, within a couple of months, starting up his new outfits, at the age of 81, shadowing the existing ensembles.

This particular mutton should also include the acknowledgement that the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestra were founded by JEG, with his own money, and on his own initiative to further his own career. It has not had much of an existence apart from him, at any stage, and I'm surprised he'd given away enough administrative power to allow himself to be kicked out by it.

It's a bit like Goneril and Regan's behaviour in ordering old, doddery, bad-tempered and personally violent King Lear out of the houses which he has ceded to them in the first place. The analogy seems right in rather too many ways for comfort.

[Ein Heldenleben]

This particular mutton should also include the acknowledgement that the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestra were founded by JEG, with his own money, and on his own initiative to further his own career. It has not had much of an existence apart from him, at any stage, and I'm surprised he'd given away enough administrative power to allow himself to be kicked out by it.

It's a bit like Goneril and Regan's behaviour in ordering old, doddery, bad-tempered and personally violent King Lear out of the houses which he has ceded to them in the first place. The analogy seems right in rather too many ways for comfort.

Not that close maybe . Lear has virtually no insight into his behaviour until the last couple of acts and JEG didn’t attempt to divide his “kingdom” in 3 . Is Lear violent ? I thought it was more to do with his riotous knights . “What need one? “
Maybe JEG is a “foolish , fond old man “ who knows? He’s certainly four score and upward. What did Goethe say : “ein alter Mann ist stets ein König Lear “

[oddoneout]

This particular mutton should also include the acknowledgement that the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestra were founded by JEG, with his own money, and on his own initiative to further his own career. It has not had much of an existence apart from him, at any stage, and I'm surprised he'd given away enough administrative power to allow himself to be kicked out by it.

It's a bit like Goneril and Regan's behaviour in ordering old, doddery, bad-tempered and personally violent King Lear out of the houses which he has ceded to them in the first place. The analogy seems right in rather too many ways for comfort.

Perhaps he didn't think or believe it would be applied to him. He had after all been behaving in a disagreeable fashion it would seem for decades and not been called to account - or at least not in any public or meaningful way?

[Master Jacques]

Not that close maybe . Lear has virtually no insight into his behaviour until the last couple of acts and JEG didn’t attempt to divide his “kingdom” in 3 . Is Lear violent ? I thought it was more to do with his riotous knights . “What need one?"

Much of the play focuses on physical (as well as psychological) coercion, in many forms, and the title figure is not exempt from either.

[Master Jacques]

Perhaps he didn't think or believe it would be applied to him. He had after all been behaving in a disagreeable fashion it would seem for decades and not been called to account - or at least not in any public or meaningful way?

As for being condemned (in Gilbert's phrase for dear old King Gama) as a "disagreeable man" over decades ... in Hamlet's words, 'who shall 'scape whipping?'

[oliver sudden]

R3ok spiked our guns because someone set up that rival board to the R3 messageboards while we were still trying to set up R3 forum Mk 1. As by that time most of the dissatisfied messageboarders had decamped to r3ok, our effort folded after a couple of years. Our second attempt has been rather longer-lived. But spite? Not us!

Sorry about that!

For me r3ok had the definite attraction of a more general kind of discussion. Although that more or less did for r3ok when people took that sort of discussion off to that silly place called Facebook. Very happy that this place has lasted longer although I wish I’d found it five years or so earlier once I realised I really didn’t like this ‘social media’ business!

[bluestateprommer]

Well, he's baaaaack:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/16/arts/music/john-eliot-gardiner-new-orchestra.html

The NYT article cites this Times of London article in quoting Alice Coote, a passage that reveals a bit both about her and JEG:

"The mezzo-soprano Alice Coote told The Times of London that Gardiner had struggled through the five-hour performance of Les Troyens in sweltering heat and had been “angered” when he didn’t receive a standing ovation."

The Times article puts the lack of a 'standing O' from the audience in context:

"[Coote] added that, at the end of the performance, the audience, also struggling in the heat, did not stand to applaud, which angered the conductor.

“By that point, he had put himself in a position where he was prepared to sort of die for it. It sounds like I’m being over-dramatic here, but I’m not. He was prepared to sort of put himself in harm’s way to finish this bloody concert."

While one can imagine the physical stress involved to all, somehow the sense of entitlement that is implicit in expecting a standing ovation rankles.

The NYT article does go to effort to present both sides of the situation, but my sense is that the author, Jeffrey Arlo Brown, would not have looked kindly on things had the Monteverdi Choir & Ensembles welcomed JEG back. If nothing else, the optics of the general situation would have looked awful, i.e. essentially looking the other way to give the "great artist" a pass.

[smittims]

I'm grateful to Alice for that delightful and concisely-worded vignette. Was she singing Dido, Cassandra or Anna?

I admired Gardiner as an interpeter of 16th and 17th century choral music but I felt he had nothing special to offer in the music of later centuries. He really ought to retire discreetly now.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Well, he's baaaaack:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/16/arts/music/john-eliot-gardiner-new-orchestra.html

The NYT article cites this Times of London article in quoting Alice Coote, a passage that reveals a bit both about her and JEG:



The Times article puts the lack of a 'standing O' from the audience in context:



While one can imagine the physical stress involved to all, somehow the sense of entitlement that is implicit in expecting a standing ovation rankles.

The NYT article does go to effort to present both sides of the situation, but my sense is that the author, Jeffrey Arlo Brown, would not have looked kindly on things had the Monteverdi Choir & Ensembles welcomed JEG back. If nothing else, the optics of the general situation would have looked awful, i.e. essentially looking the other way to give the "great artist" a pass.

Aren’t standing ovations a bit naff - the sort of thing you’d expect at the end of a West End Juke box musical or on Strictly?
I am in the habit of standing up at the end of a long opera performance because of a long- standing ( in fact years of sitting ) back problem. If I detected any hint of starting a standing ovation I’d be tempted to sit down again. I’d don’t think I can ever remember one at the ROH though several performers over the years have merited one. Thing is conducting a five hour opera isn’t that unusual and in terms of physical demands it’s nothing compared to a job like being a builder or indeed an orchestral violinist completing the estimated 50,000 bow movements in Die Meistersinger.

[Sir Velo]

Gardiner undeniably offered insights in later music than the 16th and 17th centuries. In particular, his interpretations of Beethoven, Mozart, Beethoven stripped away the accretions of earlier performance practice allowing audiences to hear and appraise the music afresh. Clearly a demanding individual, he was instrumental in bringing HIPP performances to a new level of technical accomplishment.. Above all, however, it is perhaps in the problematic Schumann symphonies where his recordings with the ORR remain the gold standard.