Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts

SIR JOHN ELIOT GARDINER Leads Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique through All-Beethoven program Kicking Off Great Orchestras Series, Nov. 15

OCTOBER 20, 2011

“The conductor John Eliot Gardiner has generally represented the best of the early-music movement.” —the New York Times

 

One of the world’s finest period-instrument ensembles, Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique (ORR), makes its highly anticipated Kimmel Center debut and kicks off the Great Orchestras series on Tuesday, November 15, 2011 at 7:30pm.  Founded in 1989 by Sir John Eliot Gardiner to promote and advocate traditional performance practice of 19th and early 20th Century music, the Orchestra is noted for its performance of Beethoven and Berlioz. Led by Gardiner, a key figure in the early music revival and also founder and director of the Monteverdi Choir, Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique visits Philadelphia as part of its Beethoven Symphonies American tour.

 

The all-Beethoven program—Egmont Overture, Op. 84; Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major, Op. 55; and Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67—offers audiences the opportunity to experience how these works may have sounded when first premiered more than a century ago.

Further projects in 2011 include a Stravinsky, Brahms and Bruckner tour and April 2011 staged performances of Weber’s Romantic opera Le Freischütz, as part of a five year collaboration with the Opéra Comique in Paris. Since 2007 ORR has performed in fully-staged opera performances of Emmanuel Chabrier's L'Etoile (2007), Bizet’s Carmen (2009) and Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande (2010).

Tickets for Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique are available from $29 to $96 by calling 215-893-1999, online at kimmelcenter.org or at the Kimmel Center Box Office located on Broad and Spruce streets, Philadelphia, PA 19102 (open daily from 10am to 6pm, later on performance evenings.)


Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique brings to the music of the 19th and early 20th centuries the same intensity of expression and stylistic accuracy found with Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s renowned period-instrument chamber ensemble, the English Baroque Soloists.  One of the Orchestra's outstanding successes has undoubtedly been its acclaimed Berlioz interpretations. This series began with the Symphonie Fantastique, performed and filmed in the former Conservatoire de la Musique in Paris where the very first performance took place in December 1830. In 1993 it gave the first modern performances of the rediscovered Messe Solennelle, and ten years later the group performed L'enfance du Christ at the Proms and the first complete performances of Les Troyens at the Châtelet in Paris.

The ORR has won plaudits for its complete cycle of Beethoven symphonies, and made critically acclaimed recordings of the Schumann symphonies as well as music by Verdi, Weber and Mendelssohn. In 2003 the Orchestra took part in a highly successful dramatization of the writing of Beethoven's Eroica Symphony for BBC television.  From 2006 to 2008, with the Monteverdi Choir and John Eliot Gardiner, the ORR took part in a mammoth ‘Brahms: Roots and Memories’ project, performing Brahms’ music along works by other composers which might have inspired him. Much of this project was recorded by the ensembles’ dedicated record label, Soli Deo Gloria (SDG).

Sir John Eliot Gardiner is one of the most versatile conductors of our time. Acknowledged as a key figure in the early music revival, he is the founder and artistic director of the Monteverdi Choir, the English Baroque Soloists and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique. Alongside the activities with his own ensembles, John Eliot Gardiner appears regularly as guest conductor with the most important European symphony orchestras, including the Vienna and Berlin Philharmonic Orchestras and the London Symphony Orchestra.

The extent of Gardiner’s repertoire is illustrated by over 250 recordings made for major European companies, which have received numerous international awards. Most recently, he has been releasing recordings of the 2000 Bach Cantata Pilgrimage and of Brahms symphonies on his record label, Soli Deo Gloria.

His most recent projects with the Monteverdi ensembles include European tours of Monteverdi’s Vespers (1610), Bach’s Mass in B Minor and Haydn’s oratorios The Creation and The Seasons. He is currently continuing a five-year collaboration with the Opéra Comique in Paris, along with the Monteverdi Choir and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique. Away from his own ensembles, John Eliot Gardiner is involved in a three-year Beethoven cycle with the London Symphony Orchestra. Future engagements include re-invitations to Covent Garden, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Orchestre National de France and the Czech Philharmonic.

In 1987 John Eliot Gardiner received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Lyon. He was nominated Commandeur dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1996, and Chevalier de la Légion d‘Honneur in 2010. In 1992 he became an Honorary Fellow of both King’s College, London, and the Royal Academy of Music. He received a knighthood in the 1998 Queen’s Birthday Honours List. In 2008 he was he was awarded the Royal Academy of Music/ Kohn Foundation’s prestigious Bach Prize.

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Kimmel Center, Inc., a charitable, not-for-profit organization, owns, manages, supports and maintains The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, which includes Verizon Hall, Perelman Theater, Innovation Studio and the Merck Arts Education Center.  Kimmel Center, Inc. also manages the Academy of Music, owned by the Philadelphia Orchestra Association, and the University of the Arts’ Merriam Theater. Our mission is to operate a world-class performing arts center that engages and serves a broad audience from throughout the Greater Philadelphia region. The 2011/12 season is sponsored by Citi.  For additional information, visit kimmelcenter.org. 

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