English Baroque Soloists

The English Baroque Soloists ranks among the foremost orchestras devoted to period instruments. John Eliot Gardiner, founder and artistic director, often unites the ensemble with his Monteverdi Choir for operatic and choral events. Their programming spans Classical-era scores alongside Baroque repertoire. In 2000 the combined forces inaugurated the Bach Cantata Pilgrimage, presenting every sacred cantata by Bach in venues across Europe. Frequent international tours and more than 100 recordings document their activity. Gardiner led the EBS and Monteverdi Choir in a 2020 recording of Handel: Semele.

Although the English Baroque Soloists was formally constituted as a period-instrument chamber group in 1978, its debut concert had already taken place the previous year at the Innsbruck Festival of Early Music, where Handel’s Acis and Galatea was performed. Gardiner assembled the new ensemble largely from players who had belonged to the Monteverdi Orchestra, which he had established in 1968. Bach and Handel dominated the early programs, yet the group soon forged a close link with Mozart through a succession of widely praised recordings. In 1984 Gardiner and the EBS began an Archiv Produktion series of Mozart’s piano concertos featuring Malcolm Bilson on fortepiano—the first such cycle on period instruments. While that project continued, a second Mozart undertaking was launched two years later, devoted to the mature symphonies and issued on Philips. The summer of 1990 brought the EBS’s Salzburg Festival debut in three concerts that drew critical praise.

Release of Piano Concerto No. 24, K. 491, and No. 27, K. 595, in 1990 completed the concerto series, yet Gardiner and the EBS immediately turned to recording Mozart’s seven mature operas for Archiv Produktion. The opening installment, Idomeneo, received Gramophone’s Best Opera Award in 1991. The same year Gardiner, the EBS, and the Monteverdi Choir appeared in a live BBC telecast of Mozart’s Requiem from the Palau de la Música Catalana. The cycle concluded in 1996 with Die Zauberflöte, after which attention returned to Bach.

A new recording initiative surfaced in the late 1990s, beginning with the 2000 release of Bach’s Cantatas No. 6 “Bleib bei uns, denn es will Abend” (BWV 6) and No. 66 “Erfreut euch, ihr Herzen” (BWV 66). That year Gardiner, the EBS, and the Monteverdi Choir presented the complete set of 198 Bach cantatas in churches throughout Europe during the Bach Cantata Pilgrimage. The 1990s also encompassed other repertoire: a 1995 Covent Garden performance of Haydn’s Die Schöpfung was warmly received and led to a 1997 Archiv Produktion recording. In addition, the EBS and Monteverdi Choir supplied the soundtrack for Tony Palmer’s 1995 film England, My England, a dramatization of Henry Purcell’s life. The same year saw Erato issue a multi-disc collection of Purcell’s music performed by Gardiner, the EBS, and the Monteverdi Choir. In 2005 the Gardiner ensembles created the Soli Deo Gloria label to publish recordings drawn from the Bach Cantata Pilgrimage. Subsequent releases on that imprint have included the 2020 account of Handel: Semele with the Monteverdi Choir under Gardiner.