Congratulations to our artistic director, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, who is among the 50 inaugural members of the Gramophone Hall of Fame.

30th March 2012

John Eliot Gardiner’s Bach cycle finds donor

from The Times, by Richard Morrison, 30th March 2012 [abridged]

Wanted: 2,500 Bach lovers, each with 20 quid to spare. Previous experience of philanthropy not essential. Admiration for Sir John Eliot Gardiner an advantage. Rewards: free CD, and small footnote in the history books for helping to complete one of the great recording projects.

The mission was one we all thought was done and dusted. Back in 2000, to mark the 250th anniversary of Bach’s death, Gardiner took his superb Monteverdi Choir on a “pilgrimage” of 50 European cathedrals and abbeys, performing all 200 of Bach’s surviving cantatas. However, completists have been mortified to discover that, even with 27 double albums now available, the set has a hole. On the 2000 tour Gardiner’s musicians performed Bach’s Ascension cantatas in Salisbury Cathedral. But what the conductor’s publicist euphemistically describes as “noise issues” meant that they weren’t recorded.

Luckily, opportunity has knocked again, in the unlikely shape of the comedian Alexander Armstrong. “I had a call a few weeks ago,” Gardiner says, “and discovered that a man I’d never met was offering to recruit 2,500 music lovers to fund a new recording of the Ascension cantatas. I’m overjoyed and immensely grateful.”