A maestro marriage is over
mainA divorce has been finalised between Sir John Eliot and Lady Isabella Gardiner after 25 years of marriage.
The pair had no children.
The maestro, 76, is reported to have other interests. He is conducting West Side Story this week at the Edinburgh Festival.
Isabella, 59, granddaughter of Victor De Sabata, met him while PR-ing for Deutsche Grammophon.
I have never imagined him to conduct the West Side Story, a score which would benefit from a moratorium, lasting perhaps 30 years.
An overrated piece by an overrated composer (and, yes, an overrated conductor too). If he had not been the first US-born musician to hold a major conducting position and received so much PR in the USA for it, we wouldn’t had been hearing so much about him.
I had such a bad time last season playing all those awful pieces by Bernstein because it was his anniversary.
All very subjective, of course… I don’t think everything Bernstein wrote is of top-drawer quality (some of the late works are, to me, impossibly kitschy and cloying), but I’d personally take what I think are the best works (the first two symphonies, the “Serenade” for violin, “Facsimile”, “Candide”, and, yes, “West Side Story”) over anything written in the last ca. 60 years by the American avant-gardists, serialists, and (especially) minimalists.
I’m sure you played them beautifully.
Poor you. How awful to have to play Trouble In Tahiti or Candide, eh?
Alfred Wallenstein started with the LA Phil in 1943. So, Bernstein wasn’t the first.
Even though the orchestra had some excellent musicians who left in Europe before and during the war (including Klemperer, who was MD for 6 years), I would not call the 1943 LA Phil a major orchestra or Wallenstein a major conductor. Yes, Bernstein was the first american conductor to reach the level of importance of european conductors both at home and overseas. I also don’t like his compositions very much, but he was, definitely, a good conductor.
I had a bad time reading your snide and misguided comment, which is sneakily anti Semitic. But I defer to your obvious talent among the second violins of a provincial orchestra…
LOL What do you know about me? I am 99.9% sure I play in a more important orchestra than you do. But think whatever you want, I could not care less.
Antisemitism? If I criticise a jewish composer I am antisemitic? So, not praising a jewish composer is antisemitism? Nonsense.
Hats off FrauGeigerin !!!
Yes – evidently the world of the offended!
Nothing anti-semitic in what she said. But, resort to ad hominem attacks is the refuge of people who have nothing substantive to say.
I agree that there was nothing overtly anti Semitic in what she said, just as the resistance to Mahler’s music by a certain Austrian orchestra was always justified on aesthetic grounds. Bernstein himself has pointed out that when he first conducted them, certain players grumbled that Mahler was “scheissmusik”—no one in his right mind would have expected them to openly have called it “judenmusik”. But the extremity of their distaste seemed to go beyond merely aesthetic differences.
Could you please explain the aforementioned anti-semitism for the uninitiated!
Would you like some cheese to go with your whine?
Would you like some crackers to go with your petulance?
Now, here we have a second class musician – freelance playing cello with some of the worst per-service orchestras – with nothing to say or offer but mockery. Very nice. Very nice indeed.
Couldn’t agree more.
West Side Story is one of the greatest musicals of all time and will stand the test of time.
Indeed.
And for a trumpet player — the part I’ve performed frequently — playing West Side Story is the single greatest thrill in the musical theatre repertoire (yes, all of Wagner included).
It already has!
In your opinion … but I love Bernstein’s music and his conducting, as I like so many other composers.
Does this mean that during the marriage Aldo Ceccato was his father in law?
Gwyneth Wentink – like a lamb to the slaughter…..silly girl.
What does it say about a man when he is thrice married?
Some fundamental personality issues going on there….
Although I have not much experience with marriage – have been married only once – it seems a bit premature to draw conclusions about an intimate relationship from such flimsy bit of news. I know of couples who think back to their divorce with sympathy and pleasure because it went so easily.
May I say, with respect, that is a somewhat naive comment…..as anyone familiar with his temperament and demeanour will amusingly attest!
In theory it is possible that Gardiner’s intensity, fast tempi and rough dealings with players and singers was caused by the much too harmonious atmosphere at home where the sweetness of happiness pre-empty any primitive fit of anger. So he took it out on the players. Now that she is gone, he may suddenly become extremely gentle in rehearsel but his performances may suffer.
I attended a couple of concerts (Haydn, Schumann) in Munich two months ago, with JEG conducting the BRSO. By then the wedding ring had already been gone from his hand. But that was a terrific experience, he was the same sharp, precise, concentrated music driving power as ever. So hopefully there isn’t any connection here
Yes, got to agree with that. Significant red flags flying.
Maybe JEG will copy John Cleese and do an ‘Alimony Tour’ to raise money for his growing list of ex-wives
Or maybe he will copy Cleese and go and live in self-imposed exile. With a bit of luck.
Schadenfreude 😉
never before have I witnessed so much negative energy spread so intensely by one person in this business, and I speak from the experience of working closely hand in hand with him for the greater part of a year.
Let me guess…59 years old is now “too old” for Mr 76yr old. Therefore, he has found a younger one, so that he can go on deceiving himself (not us) that he in his thirties.
Pathetic.
Well the lucky girl is a harpist in her 30s. Presumably dazzled by his dashing good looks …
That’s correct. The next one is one generation younger.
Actually, he IS in his thirties but his countenance suffered gravely from the strong winds produced by the brass under his encouragements.
DeSabata. Now HE was a conductor…….
He’s been dead for over 50 years ffs!
The fact of his demise doesn’t make him any less great – as recordings well testify (likely to the chagrin of some of today’s “interpreters)! Many current “names” could learn a great deal in discovering the essence of his – and a number of his contemporaries’ – prevailing success!
So much negativity regarding both the man (both as a man and as a musician) and his ex-wife.
One can only hope that each comment is based on PERSONAL knowledge of them both.
I never worked with him, but I have great admiration for someone who put so much energy into his professional work, as well as spending hours and hours in studying the work of the truly GREAT composers – then applying th fruits of his studies to realising the pieces in performances and in recordings.
The comments here Chris, are only the printable ones…..
Think of the worst story you ever heard about him, then double-it, and add some sprinkles on top…and that’ll be a good beginning.
The only thing he will leave of any value to humanity is an excellent book on Bach, and some superb recordings. The man himself is “unreliable” in the human sense.
Maybe he put all his best characteristics in one single box and there was nothing left to share with the world in a more direct way. A case of depletion and prioritizing. I am also a noble gentleman cultivating the hightest standards of humanism and civility, but cannot restain from treating staff in the most abject manner, it’s stronger than me.
“Never write what you dare not sign. An anonymous letter-writer is a sort of assassin, who wears a mask, and stabs in the dark. Such a man is a fiend with a pen. If discovered, the wretch will be steeped in the blackest infamy.”
— Charles Spurgeon
Seems to apply to quite a number of contributors of the SD comment sections.
The reviews are out of JEG’s West Side Story and it seems to have been great success ? JEG even plays Officer Krupke
Anyone else like Gardiner’s Debussy CD with the with the VPO?
Good catch “guest” for Alfred Wallenstein and the LAPO, also AllenC for Klemperer, who was preceded by Willem van Hoogstraten.
By Wallenstein’s last concert in 1956 the LAPO weren’t bad: Brahms second and Sibelius with Heifetz.– OrsonWelles, Albert Basserman, and Rachmaninoff’s friend soprano Nina Koshetz in the audience. They called it Wallenstein’s Camp after Schiller’s play. She entered through a luckily open double door,
Wallenstein was NBC’s solo cellist under Toscanini. another cellist. His first cellist at LAPO was Kurt Reher, who went on to the NYPO. Reher said the best cellist in L.A. was George Neikrug who played with a studio orchestra.
I’m not side-tracking this thread; it was side-tracked alfready.