Found at the The Times, London (July 7 1999)

   John Eliot Gardiner tells Richard Morrison about his epic millennium
   pilgrimage

   Sir John Eliot Gardiner will conduct all 200 of Bach's cantatas, in
   50 cathedrals, churches and abbeys around Europe Not all millennium
   projects are dome-shaped or pear-shaped.  Consider how John Eliot
   Gardiner plans to spend the year 2000.  Between Christmas Day, 1999
   and January 1, 2001 he will conduct all 200 of Bach's surviving church
   cantatas.  What's more, he will perform them on the precise liturgical
   dates for which they were written.  Deutsche Grammophon will record
   the concerts as they happen; many will also be televised throughout
   Europe.

   And in the process Gardiner will have shunted his Monteverdi Choir
   and English Baroque Soloists round 50 different European churches,
   cathedrals and abbeys - from Orkney and Pembrokeshire to Milan and
   Zurich. If musical projects were mountains, this would surely be
   Everest.

   Why is he doing it? After all, it is not as if he needs to make his
   name.  His brilliant pioneering of Baroque music in the 1970s and
   1980s, his bold period-instrument forays into the Romantics, and more
   recently his success with top-notch "normal" orchestras like the
   Vienna Philharmonic and (this week) the London Symphony - all this
   has made the 56-year-old Englishman one of the most celebrated figures
   on the musical scene.

   Nor does the Monteverdi Choir need the practice.  Founded by Gardiner
   when he was a Cambridge undergraduate in 1964, it has long since
   established itself as one of the top half-dozen choirs in the world.
   So why the 40,000-mile trek round Europe in honour of Bach, a composer
   not exactly in need of special pleading? "The main point is that the
   concept, mad though it is, can only happen in one particular year,"
   Gardiner says.  "It's tailor-made for the millennium and for Bach's
   death year.

   "Either you ignore a composer's anniversary, as some people think
   you should, or you go to the heart of his music.  Where is the heart
   of Bach? Surely in his cantatas.  Only half a dozen are at all well
   known, but I haven't found a dud one yet."

   Gardiner's original concept was to base the project around Leipzig,
   Weimar and the other German towns where Bach (never a big traveller)
   spent nearly all his working life.  Then Gardiner planned to take
   in towns such as Lubeck, with which Bach had a connection ("he would
   have become the organist there, but for the nasty tradition of having
   to marry the preceding organist's daughter").  Finally the project
   would follow the "expansion of Christianity" outwards in concentric
   circles.  "That meant following the route of the old merchant
   adventurers through the Baltic and over to the British Isles,
   especially the Celtic parts," Gardiner says.  And in each new town,
   links would be established between Gardiner's ultra-professionals
   and local amateur musicians, usually by getting the town's choir
   or congregation to sing the chorales.

   Some of that concept, including the last bit, has been realised.  On
   the actual anniversary of Bach's death, for instance, Gardiner and
   his nomads ("we could have called the project Beduin Bach") will be
   in the perfect haven: the ethereally tranquil setting of Iona Abbey
   in the Hebrides.

   But practical obstacles soon became apparent.  Some of the finest
   Baroque churches in eastern Germany simply couldn't afford to host
   Gardiner and his musicians.  "Unemployment in Saxony is running at
   25 per cent," Gardiner notes sadly.  So he transferred concerts to
   more prosperous cities in France and Spain.

   Even so, the funding of the project, costing more than 5 million,
   has become a worry.  Astonishingly, this quintessential millennium
   project, showcasing two of Britain's greatest musical ensembles across
   the whole continent, was refused a grant by the Millennium Commission
   - presumably on the ground that it wasn't dull enough.

   The logistics are fiendishly complicated.  Bach's cantatas have many
   passages just for solo singers and "continuo" players: cello and
   keyboard.  So, to save paying "idle time" to the orchestra and choir
   (fees for days when they are on tour but not actually required), they
   are being rehearsed in London and flown out to concerts.  But this
   means that Gardiner will continually be hopping across Europe like
   a musical flea.  The epithet "jet-setting maestro" has rarely seemed
   so apposite.  In all he expects to make 150 flights.

   Just as well that he loves Bach.  "He can appeal on so many different
   levels: intellectual, numerological, theological.  But also, at the
   most basic level, he just makes you feel better for listening to
   him." The "Bach Cantata Pilgrimage", as it is now called, hasn't
   entirely taken over Gardiner's waking hours.  The man who once told
   the French that there were 400 errors in Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande,
   and is now planning to perform Bach in Leipzig, boldly undertook
   another "coals to Newcastle" exercise this year when he conducted
   Lehar's Merry Widow at the Vienna State Opera.

   The experience wasn't quite as merry as the widow.  "Everyone warned
   me that a different 'Vienna Philharmonic' would turn up each night,
   but I didn't quite realise how radically different the orchestra
   would be," Gardiner admits ruefully.  "After a while I was amazed to
   find anybody who had played in the previous performance.  It was a
   real highs-and-lows experience.  One moment I would hear the violas
   lilting the waltz rhythms perfectly, and I would think: 'Ah, this
   is why I am conducting the Widow in Vienna.' The next, a great douche
   of cold water was poured on my head by some vile, out-of-tune wind
   entry."

   There are unlikely to be many of those in Gardiner's current assignment,
   conducting the LSO in two fascinating 20th-century programmes for
   the City of London Festival.  Tomorrow's includes the choral work Du
   fond de l'abime to celebrate the centenary of its composer, Lili
   Boulanger - a remarkable Frenchwoman who died at the age of 24.

   Gardiner has a personal link with the work.  He was taught by Lili's
   sister Nadia, who bequeathed to him many scores and parts for Lili's
   compositions.  "It's a beautiful setting of Psalm 130 - 'Out of the
   deep have I cried unto Thee, O Lord' - and it was written when Lili
   was already getting ill," Gardiner says.  "Of course you can hear
   that bits sound like Ravel, Puccini and Faure.  But that doesn't get
   you to the heart of the matter, which is that it's an intensely
   personal rhapsody." Catch it tomorrow.  It may not be around again
   for a while.

Dave
[log in to unmask]
http://www.classical.net/