John Eliot Gardiner Essentials

For over 50 years, Gardiner has made music with his Monteverdi Choir, injecting dynamism and drama into choral works from the Renaissance to the present day with classic accounts of the Monteverdi Vespers, Bach's Passions and cantatas, Beethoven's Missa solemnis and the Verdi Requiem along the way. With his orchestras—the English Baroque Soloists and Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique—he explored everything from Mozart and Beethoven symphonies to Berlioz and Brahms. He is a passionate Francophile, and has a winning way with lighter fare such as Chabrier and Offenbach.