In Rehearsal: John Eliot Gardiner

Through his particular combination of scholarship and inspired musicianship, John Eliot Gardiner has won international acclaim as a key figure in the revival of early music. His concert performances and recordings with the ensembles he has founded – the Monteverdi Choir, the English Baroque Soloists and the Orchestra Révolutionnaire et Romantique – are unmistakable, not just for their zest and technical mastery, but as highly personal readings of music from Monteverdi to Verdi and beyond.

This present film of the rehearsal of Bach’s Canata BWV 63 is intercut with comments from the singers and an interview with John Eliot Gardiner which reveals not only the depth of his knowledge of Bach’s music but also his profound love of the composer’s work. He talks incisively about Bach’s music as a whole, the place of the cantatas in the composer’s oeuvre, the particular structure and brilliance of “Christen, ätzet diesen Tag”, and explains something of his reasons for championing authentic rendition.