John Eliot Gardiner will make Salzburg return
NewsOne of the first events in next summer’s festival will be Handel’s ‘Israel in Egypt’ conducted by Sir John Eliot Gardiner, who has withdrawn from all engagements for several months after an incident last summer in Berlioz’s Les Troyens.
Gardiner will conduct the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists in a single performance of the oratorio. No soloists have yet been named.
We understand that Gardiner, 80, intends to return to international action rather sooner, in April or May 2024.
It’s going to be a bit of a bash then in old Vienna. History shows us that they are well used to autocratic dictators over there.
I a thousand-year history, yes, they’ve had one autocratic dictator. I guess that’s somebody else’s “well used to”.
Franz-Josef, Maria-Theresa, Joseph II, Metternich, to name but a few.
Charles Quintus
Oh, so they killed Jews. I didn’t know.
Funnily enough, was having exactly this conversation with an industry colleague a couple of weeks ago. “Do you think he’s finished then?” “Yeah, in Britain, but he’ll be back before long in Europe. They don’t give a shit how many little people get punched, over there”.
a) “in Europe”! Is Britain in Africa? Or Asia?
b) the last sentence is even more ridiculous.
As has been generally established since their embarrassing brexit, Britain is not in Europe, it belongs to the Anglo-Saxon continent.
“As has been generally established since their embarrassing brexit, Britain is not in Europe, it belongs to the Anglo-Saxon continent”
You pathetic nutjob, UK has been in Europe for centuries, with or without a monetary union!
We’ve never had a monetary union with other countries in Europe.
Clearly you’ve never lived with Spread and Bail-outs under the €-despoty the last 20 plus years.
For older citizens in Southern Europe, life has become 10-times more expensive under the “common currency”, in order to pay the bills of poor member states.
What else would you call it if not a monetary union/despoty?
Millenials won’t certainly understand, but my point was, that there was a Europe also before Delors, Kohl and later Barroso. And England is Europe, regardless of anything.
But of course, this has little to do with the subject at hand.
You must be American. You don’t understand irony.
Well, approximately 5% of the people do; that’s still a lot of people!!!
This is hilarious! Well done!
Brexit, C J, brexit!
Britain is part of Europe. At least it was last time I looked.
But not part of the mainland of Europe, which is what I think is being referred to.
But not subject to the whim of the European Commission which was the main reason for leaving!
So true. I doubt Gardiner will be conducting in North America any time soon either. Europe’s classical music establishment is totally amoral, OTOH, welcoming back Domingo, Netrebko and a host of other compromised names in the pursuit of a quick buck. The sad part is, audiences there are largely complicit.
We should all be sent off to a ‘re-education’ camp and I’m betting you’ve got just the one in mind. An Ivy League university!!
Ah thanks for speaking on behalf of our entire continent. Personally, I would gladly welcome him back to NYC, and I know hundreds who think the same. If he’s better, let the guy conduct and don’t be so sensationalist.
As a New Yorker myself, I would be joining many fellow Gardiner protesters outside the hall. No need to give a bully a platform when there are plenty of other people (including women and people of color) who can wave a baton in 2023.
How predictably ‘right on’.
Complicit in what?
Mainly because Britain already has lots of conductors specialising in the same thing JEG does (and are known to be easier to work with), so he has stiff competition in the UK and won’t be missed.
The bigger issue is what will happen to the ensembles he founded, ie Monteverdi Choir, English Baroque Soloists, Orchestra Revolutionaire et Romantique, will continue without him, or only perform with him conducting but risk getting too few or no bookings if they choose the latter, and having to disband.
In other countries in Europe there are far fewer conductors specialising in baroque or historically informed performing in each country so he could easily get booked in the countries where the Les Troyens incident didn’t make the news.
I disagree completely. There are very few conductors of this repertoire working at anywhere near the same level as Sir John Eliot in the UK. From an audience perspective, there are dozens I have spoken to who want to see him back on the podium as soon as possible.
We find difficult people in all walks of life, many have lapses in judgement and if they own up to them as JEG has and put in the work to move past them, I wholeheartedly believe they deserve the opportunity to demonstrate the results of that work.
I think it’s time to stop the grandstanding and let him come back as soon as he feels ready and confident that nothing like this would happen again. Let’s face it, at the end of the day, this was incredibly minor in comparison to many of the scandals classical music has been the subject of in recent history!
Doesn’t “lapse in judgement” trivialise the matter, as though someone calculated wrongly how long they needed to cook the meal?
Absolutely!
Concentus Musicus Wien seems to be continuing alright, despite the death in 2016 of Harnoncourt. It’s important to have succession plans, though, it has to be said.
That’s weird, because everyone I’ve spoken to says Will Thomas had it coming and they feel sorry for JEG. Truth is, Will is just a worse aim – he threw first punch but missed.
Everyone in Will’s year at GSMD says he’s the most punchable person. JEG just did what lots of others wanted to.
Hi Steph,
Would you consider deleting your comment? It’s unpleasant and unhelpful.
How would you go about backing up this assertion about Europeans?
Many musicians prefer working in central Europe as classical music is more highly regarded and better supported.
I think I would want to know more about the counselling he was getting before booking to see him again. There’s no denying he is an absolute legend of our times, but I personally would only want to see him return to the podium if it were safe for those around him.
I don’t think we need some grand statement. No doubt the orchestra will have gone through all that.
Let’s just get him back in the driving seat as soon as he’s ready so we can appreciate everything he brings to the music for as long as we have him!
Speaking as a qualified counsellor with 25 years experience. Any counselling he may have received might have been useful and might have made some quick initial progress. However, this is unlikely to have bottomed out the anger issues, which are equally likely to be the surface of unmet needs and therefore, authentically, pain. He would need a relationship(s) of an ongoing, even if intermittent, kind. This would give him a chance to behave differently. He would have an uphill task to convince those around him that substantial change is real. But it is possible……
Unlikely to have dealt with his god delusions either. Honestly, the excuses people have been making for him and the inaction from the board are sickening. Whatever he or his acolytes might like us to think, he’s hardly one of the great geniuses of our time, nor would he have been much missed.
Name others who have done more than JEG in his particular field.
An angry tyrannical conductor. Unheard of.
That old chestnut; safetyism. How preposterous to think we can all be kept ‘safe’ in this state of existence.
Nanny may have told you that, but always proceed on the assumption that she may just be wrong.
I’m sure the orchestra will appreciate the return of his steady beat…
All jokes aside, I do hope he has used this time well to get to the bottom of and sort out whatever was going on. There is no room for anger issues in our concert halls these days.
After 60 years of this sort of behaviour, and worse, it’s unlikely. It’s a god delusion he has, not anger issues.
For Israel in Egypt, I’d expect the soloists to come from the ranks of the Monteverdi Choir, which certainly has singers capable of them.
That was always the case years ago when I was involved with the organisation.
Groan. Hope crash helmets are provided.
Let’s hope he can now punch ABOVE his weight.
Amazing news!!!! We’ve missed him!
Ah, a sycophant speaks. The music world is much better off without him.
His 1978 recording of Israel in Egypt is for me the finest ever made. I picked up the LP when I was a student and bought the CD when it was re-released in the early 2000s – sheer genius from first bar to last and I’d highly recommend!
It is not complete, alas. Nor is his 1990 recording. Have you heard Parrott?
Or Christophers.
Quite : Immensely talented as a conductor and writer ( I like his book on JSB) he’s hardly irreplaceable. There’s alot of absurd hero -worship in the classical music industry.
I am sure the performance will be a great hit.
He just can’t stop with hit, after hit, after hit….
Delighted to read this! Having spoken to several players the orchestra, they are desperate for him to come back.
Because they’re desperate for their careers not to be over. Otherwise it’s appalling news that he’s allowed anywhere near a podium again.
Sounds like Stockholm Syndrome. Hostages can develop a psychological bond with their captors, after all.
John Eliot Gardiner may have made (a) mistake(s), but he is still a great musician (I remember his 3 Monteverdi’s operas in Venice).
Wouldn’t it be a pity, for music’s sake, to deprive ourselves of a great musician?
He must have learned the lesson by now.
Hitting someone isn’t a *mistake*. If you hit someone other than you intended to, that might involve a mistake, but hitting someone isn’t in itself a mistake. The word “mistake” is often used to minimise bad behaviour of all kinds, as though the behaviour in question is comparable to, silly me, getti two digits of your PIN number in the wrong order.
Big deal. Really. Lets get a life here.
Oh, dear, the riposte of the desperate – “Get a life.”
Agreed. ‘Mistake’ should be used for errors of fact, not errors of judgement. The act of hitting somebody is intentional, not accidental, albeit in the heat of the moment. That’s not to say it’s unforgivable, but the perpetrator needs – to use the jargon – to ‘own it’. And ‘mistake’ isn’t the right term to signal that (JEG may well have ‘owned it’ for all I know).
“Error of judgement” isn’t any better. An error of judgement might be, say, taking the finale too slow.
I would suggest that JEG’s action was a hair-trigger response driven by intense perfectionism and very probably some other issues coming into play about which we know nothing.
Perfectionism can be a very negative emotion and damaging to one’s own blood pressure and certainly to others. He needs to CHILL, since he has already apologized.
There are more things in life than stage tableaux and perfect pitch – but not for him apparently.
I’m forgiving him because I wasn’t involved, but I do know human beings have faults and flaws and trying to smooth these out will produce greater negative results for society than the occasional outburst and smack. If he yells all the time this signals to me a loss of control too.
Very glad to see this. It’s about time we moved beyond cancel culture aside and let extraordinary talent reclaim its rightful place.
I don’t think it’s a question of cancel culture. It’s not a question of his ability as a musician. It’s about whether he can be trusted to not hit out (that’s not a metaphor) at anybody who annoys him, disagrees, or, in other ways, gets in the way of his vision.
He should have been banned and probably jailed for his behaviour over the years, and well before this relatively minor incident. There’s nothing extraordinary about him, beyond his ego.
He is an obsessive perfectionist who wants a recorded and musicological legacy. He will get that, despite his peccadilloes.
He’s outstanding and his work speaks for itself.
I would hold out some hope that if he did NOT have a great coming-to-jesus about his past behavior, then at least he was humiliated by this incident enough to realize that it’s diminished his brand. My guess is it’s somewhere in the middle, he’s no dummy.
Since his outburst was mainly due to medication, he was not entirely responsible. On top of that, musicians are not entirely responsible for their behavior anyway. It is in the Psychiatric Handbook of Handling Difficult Types who Don’t want to Listen, edition 2017.
And the other outbursts and assaults over the years? Utter nonsense. It’s a whitewash, pure and simple. Should have been jailed years ago.
Bit of a personal crusade for you? Another musician never booked by him, perhaps?
Booked. Walked away because of his behaviour. Refused to join the brainwashed minions.
Jailed? Come on.
What’s all this need for punishment now?
The type of assaults usually warrants it.
Based on the accounts I read, you are incorrect.
(Lawyer)
It’s a social problem. The patriarchy and white oppression. The victim/oppressor narrative. JEG is the oppressor, don’t you see.
Hacomblen has been to university so learned all about it and is a recognized authority.
“The Lord is a man of war”….
You win the comment thread.
Hopefully he’s had enough ‘therapy’. Bless his delicate soul!
From the instruction handbook for therapists: Chapter 8: Treatment of Angry Conductors
1) Lay them down on the sofa in such a way that they cannot see you making notes, preferably at the head side of the sofa; dimmed lighting; play a recording of Satie’s ‘Vexations’ softly in the background
2) Ask them about their youth, their first impression of classical music and the reaction of their parents
3) Say ‘I understand’ in a soft, reassuring tone
4) Ask them about their student days and ignore the angry stuff about girlfriends
5) Explore the moment they got a baton in their hands for the first time
6) Ask ‘And how did that make you feel?’
7) Try to keep awake while they tell about their surge of ambitions
8) Ask them about their last dreams in which orchestra rehearsals played a part
9) Say ‘I understand’ in an assertive, authoritarian tone and add: ‘Everybody would get frustrated with such a player!’
9b) if it’s about a tuba player: add: ‘Next time you put the instrument over his head’. This imagined perspective will greatly reduce performance anxiety
10) Ask, after their dream sequences, ‘And how does that make you feel?’ and try to note down only the bits that stick-out as interpersonal subjectivations, not the other stuff about music
11) By this time, time will be up and tell them your fee
12) Ask them: ‘How do you think this make ME feel?’ and ring for your secretary
Either that or a screening of the excellent film, “A Fine Madness” with Sean Connery and Joanne Woodward.
I’ve certainly wanted to punch singers that I’ve worked with in the past. Many of them are know-it-alls who can’t back up their pretension with actual intelligent musical ideas. I think this pathetic “punishment” has gone on long enough. It’s not like he occupied a territory for 70 years.
@Reality Check – wow, a belittling attitude towards colleagues and casual anti-Semitism all neatly wrapped up in one small paragraph. But then we know Jiggy’s father was a Nazi sympathiser. No wonder you’re defending him.
Is that really anti-Semitism?
Another sad American hater from a very big and expanding legion. That IS a psychological territory which increasing numbers of Americans now ‘occupy’.
So he is to be punished for the sins of his father? Would you care to see all our courts proceed on that principle?
You would be sacked from most well-managed organisations for behaviour like his. Not sure why he gets another gig.
So the soloists will be wearing body armour for rehearsals?
How is this man allowed to return – he should be forever cancelled.
Who let the puncher out?
(Who, who, who, who)
If people would write ‘on the ‘Continent’, meaning mainland Europe, there’d be no confusion here. Britain is an island within Europe, of course.
That may be geographically true, but people don’t think geographically, they think (and feel) culturally. And culturally GB is not much European. For them, all misery comes from the continent. If they had only be left alone, they would live in paradise.
Cant wait! There has definitely been something missing from the Montiverde choir. The passion, experience and musical wizardry that John Eliot brings to the stage is unmatched.