John Eliot Gardiner and the Monteverdi Choir explore Brahms's Requiem, while Philippe Herreweghe, Collegium Vocale Gent and Ann Hallenberg turn to the Alto Rhapsody. Counter-tenor Iestyn Davies sings arias composed for Guadagni, while Andreas Scholl sing

Distilling your Christmas favourites into a succinct playlist is like trying to cram the creator of the universe into a manger – not entirely impossible, but it needs a bit of thought and planning. Just as the Christ-child had to surrender aspects of di

I don’t have a hot line to Beethoven, but I have the feeling he would have been in two minds about last Friday’s performance of his Choral Symphony under Sir John Eliot Gardiner. Undoubtedly he would have admired the crack playing of the London Symphony

It’s a peculiar fact that – in the age of iPods and cheap CDs – I’ve heard Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony many more times that his contemporaries would have. It’s doubly weird when you consider that the great composer never heard it himself: by the time of i

Music whose shock-value is an integral part of its power should not be heard too often, and when it’s plundered and parodied like Beethoven’s Ninth, this holds particularly true: three times a year is enough. The first time I heard the Ninth this year wa

DORSET organic farmer and internationally acclaimed conductor Sir John Eliot Gardiner, returns to his home county next weekend for Dorset Wildlife Trust's golden jubilee concert with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra at Poole's Lighthouse arts centre. I