Conductor Sir John Eliot Gardiner Celebrates Beethoven at Carnegie Hall

Sir John Eliot Gardiner Curates Carnegie Hall Perspectives Series Featuring His Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique Performing A Complete Beethoven Symphony Cycle on Period Instruments in Five Concerts, February 19-24

Winter Concerts Are Part of Carnegie Hall’s Beethoven Celebration in Honor of the 250th Anniversary of the Composer’s Birth

This February, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Artistic Director and Conductor of the internationally acclaimed period instrument ensemble Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique (ORR), curates a five-concert Perspectives series at Carnegie Hall, featuring a complete Beethoven symphony cycle performed as part of Carnegie Hall’s season-long celebration of the 250th anniversary year of Beethoven’s birth.

The five New York City concerts by Sir John Eliot Gardiner and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique are part of Carnegie Hall’s season-long Beethoven Celebration featuring more than 35 events highlighting the immensity of the composer’s transformative impact on music, performed by a remarkable line-up of internationally renowned musicians.

Grounded in Maestro Gardiner’s exacting study of Beethoven’s original manuscripts, the symphonies will be performed as the composer would have experienced them, played on period instruments, including valveless brass, woodwinds without additional keys and levers, gut strings, and hide-covered timpani struck with hard sticks.

Sir John Eliot Gardiner (www.monteverdi.co.uk)

A key figure both in the early music revival and as a pioneer of historically informed performances, Maestro Gardiner kicks off the ORR’s five-concert series on Wednesday, February 19 at 8:00 p.m. with selections from Beethoven’s rarely heard ballet score, The Creatures of Prometheus; the concert aria, “Ah! perfido;” excerpts from Leonore; and the composer’s Symphony No. 1; Soprano Lucy Crowe joins the orchestra as soloist. On Thursday, February 20 at 8:00 p.m., the orchestra performs Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2 and Symphony No. 3, “Eroica.” The series continues Friday, February 21 at 8:00 p.m. with symphonies Nos. 4 and 5. On Sunday, February 23 at 2:00 p.m., the program includes Symphony No. 6, “Pastoral” and Symphony No. 7. For the series’ final concert on Monday, February 24 at 8:00 p.m. the ORR’s Beethoven cycle culminates with the symphonies Nos. 8 and 9, with the orchestra joined by soprano Lucy Crowe, contralto Jess Dandy, tenor Ed Lyon, and bass Tareq Nazmi, alongside The Monteverdi Choir. As a prelude to the cycle, Maestro Gardiner will be joined by distinguished Beethoven scholar William Kinderman for a discussion in Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall to illuminate Sir John Eliot’s approach to these symphonic masterworks (Tuesday, February 18 at 7:00 p.m.). In addition to the public discussion with Sir John Eliot on February 18, Carnegie Hall Debs Composer’s Chair Jörg Widmann will present a talk later this spring (Mar. 29, WRH), enabling audiences to gain greater insights into Beethoven’s music.

The ORR’s final February 24 concert will be heard by listeners around the world as part of the ninth annual Carnegie Hall Live broadcast and digital series with a live radio broadcast on WQXR 105.9 FM in New York and online at wqxr.org and carnegiehall.org/wqxr. Produced by WQXR and Carnegie Hall and co-hosted by WQXR’s Jeff Spurgeon and Clemency Burton-Hill, select Carnegie Hall Live broadcasts featured throughout the season include special digital access to the broadcast team, from backstage and in the control room, connecting national and international fans to the music and to each other.

When asked to reflect on thirty years of music making with the ORR and his upcoming Beethoven symphony performances, Sir John Eliot Gardiner said “When we started the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique 30 years ago, our mission statement included trying to recover the world of Beethoven’s sound. Our aim was to provide bold new perspectives on the glorious orchestral works of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Since the ensemble’s inception, we have used our time together productively and creatively to explore fresh approaches to this much-loved music, some of it familiar but also some of it neglected or undervalued. Through the use and mastery of period instruments, the ORR musicians bring out the subtle and pervasive differences in the palette of sounds that composers as different as Beethoven, Berlioz, Schumann, Debussy, and Verdi were committed to revealing. Time and again, the players have shown vision and tenacity in demonstrating the techniques and sounds required to recapture the true essence of this music. Every time we embark on a fresh project together, I am amazed and touched by the way the players seem willing to put their necks on the block in order to bring this music back to intoxicating life once again.”

The Carnegie Hall performances are part of Maestro Gardiner and the ORR’s Beethoven 250, a yearlong celebration of the composer’s milestone anniversary, and are also part of the ORR’s 30th anniversary season. The orchestra’s transatlantic tour, February 9-June 27, also includes engagements and complete symphony cycles at Chicago’s Harris Theater, London’s Barbican Hall, and Barcelona’s Palau de la Música.

Program Information

SIR JOHN ELIOT GARDINER ON THE BEETHOVEN SYMPHONIES

• Tuesday, February 18, 2020 at 7:00 PM, Weill Recital Hall

• Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Speaker
• with William Kinderman, Moderator
• Robin Michael, Principal Cello
• Anneke Scott, Principal Horn

BEETHOVEN’S SYMPHONIES AND THE EMPIRE OF THE MIND

Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s groundbreaking interpretations of Beethoven’s music have cast this magnificent body of work in a new light. Joined by distinguished Beethoven scholar William Kinderman and ORR principals Robin Michael and Anneke Scott for this illuminating discussion, Gardiner shares his insights about his approach to this immortal music. Tickets: $25

ORCHESTRE RÉVOLUTIONNAIRE ET ROMANTIQUE

• Wednesday, February 19, 2020 at 8:00 PM
• Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage
• Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Artistic Director and Conductor
• Lucy Crowe, Soprano

ALL-BEETHOVEN PROGRAM

• Overture, Introduction, and Act I from The Creatures of Prometheus, Op. 43
• “Ah! perfido,” Op. 65
• Symphony No. 1 in C Major, Op. 21
• Leonore Overture No. 1, Op. 138
• “Ach, brich noch nicht, du mattes Herz!” – “Komm, Hoffnung, lass den letzten Stern” from Act II of Leonore, Op. 72
• Finale to The Creatures of Prometheus, Op. 43

Tickets: $32-$105