Earlier this week, Sir John Eliot Gardiner led the Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique and the Monteverdi Choir in two immortal Mozart works: the C-minor Mass and the Requiem, followed by an evening of Mozart's orchestral works. Here are three reviews.
Mozart, Secular and Sacred, Following His Own Bliss
By BERNARD HOLLAND [NY Times, 25 January 2006]
Mozart wrote most of his music to make a living. The idea of the disheveled artist in his garret shaking his fist at fate and plotting a glorious posterity was not a workable image in the 1780's. Yet all five pieces presented by John Eliot Gardiner, the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique and the Monteverdi Choir over two days at Lincoln Center were composed for reasons we don't quite understand, though one is a subject of romantic speculation.
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Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique/Gardiner
By Martin Bernheimer [Financial Times, 25 January 2006]
Have we had enough Mozart yet, in the year in which the universe celebrates the 250th anniversary of his birth? Cultural orgies can cloy, even when they honour a genius. It seems only yesterday (it was 1991) when we wallowed in the 200th anniversary of Mozart's death. So one must be grateful for interpretive favours.
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A doubly sentient Mozart with Mass appeal
BY JUSTIN DAVIDSON [Newsday, 25 January 2006]
John Eliot Gardiner conducts Mozart the way autumn brings crystal skies. Sunday was double Mass day at Avery Fisher Hall - first the C-minor and then the Requiem. Sacred landscapes quivered with all the detail of those sharp, glinting days when each leaf fluoresces and shadows etch the outline of every bough.