This October, Carnegie Hall presents “Haydn After Mozart”: three concerts of Joseph Haydn’s late masterworks, all composed in the eleven years after younger composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s death in 1791. On Thursday, October 15 at 8:00 p.m., Sir John Eliot Gardiner conducts the period-informed ensemble Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique and The Monteverdi Choir, both founded by him, in Haydn’s The Seasons with soprano Lucy Crowe, tenor James Gilchrist, and bass Matthew Rose in Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage. Maestro Gardiner then returns to Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage on Saturday, October 17 at 8:00 p.m. to lead the orchestra and choir in Haydn’s The Creation. Soprano Sophie Karthäuser and bass Vuyani Mlinde join returning soloists Crowe, Gilchrist, and Rose, for this engaging oratorio.

Between the two orchestral presentations, on Friday, October 16 at 7:30 p.m., Andreas Staier, prominent harpsichordist and fortepianist, will perform a variety of Haydn’s works, at his Zankel Hall recital, demonstrating the evolution of the composer’s keyboard writing from his earlier life to his later years.

Artist Information
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 activities with his own ensembles, Maestro Gardiner appears regularly as guest conductor with the most important European orchestras, including the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Berliner Philharmoniker and the London Symphony Orchestra. The extent of his repertoire is demonstrated by over 250 recordings made for many record companies, principally Deutsche Grammophon and Philips Classics, which have received numerous international awards. Over the years Maestro Gardiner has won more Gramophone awards than any other artist. His recordings include the six late masses by Haydn. Most recently, he has released recordings of the Bach cantatas on his own record label Soli Deo Gloria. The first release was awarded Gramophone Record of the year in 2005. In December 2007 Maestro Gardiner began an exciting collaboration with Opéra Comique in Paris: conducting the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique and The Monteverdi Choir in eight fully-staged performances of Emmanuel Chabrier's opera bouffe, L'Étoile. In autumn 2007 and 2008 he undertook a mammoth project involving 26 performances of five Brahms programs with the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique and The Monteverdi Choir. His recording of Brahms’s Symphony No. 1 on Soli Deo Gloria was released in September 2008 and Brahms’s Symphony No. 2 was released in January 2009.

Andreas Staier, born in 1955 in Göttingen, Germany, studied piano and harpsichord in Hanover and Amsterdam and spent three years as harpsichordist of Musica Antiqua Köln. In 1986 he began his solo career as a harpsichordist and fortepiano player. He has distinguished himself as one of the most influential and intellectual artists in his field, performing works by composers from Haydn to Schumann. As a soloist, Mr. Staier collaborates regularly with Concerto Köln, the Freiburger Baroque Orchestra, the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, Orchester des Champs-Elysées, Paris, among others. He has made numerous guest appearances at major international music festivals, including Festival de La Roque d'Anthéron, Festival de Saintes, Festival de Montreux, Styrian Graz, Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, Bach Festival Leipzig, BachTage Berlin, Bach Week in Ansbach, Kissinger Summer, and he has also performed at internationally renowned concert venues from Berlin to Tokyo. He has produced about 50 CD recordings, many which have been awarded with international prizes.

In 1989, Sir John Eliot Gardiner established Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique with an aim of bringing the same stylistic accuracy to music of the 19th and early 20th centuries that his English Baroque Soloists, founded in 1978, brought to music of the Baroque period. The orchestra received much acclaim early on for its interpretations of music by Berlioz, beginning with Symphonie Fantastique, performed and filmed in the former Conservatoire de la Musique in Paris, where the very first performance of the work had taken place in December 1830. In 1993 the orchestra gave the first modern performances of the rediscovered Messe Solennelle, and, ten years later, the group presented L'enfance du Christ at the BBC Proms as well as the first complete performances of Les Troyens at the Châtelet in Paris. The Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique has won praise for its complete cycle of Beethoven symphonies as well as its critically acclaimed recordings of all the Schumann symphonies and music by Verdi, Weber, and Mendelssohn. In 2003, the orchestra took part in the making of a highly successful dramatization of the writing of Beethoven's “Eroica” Symphony for BBC television. Plans for 2010 include a return to the Opéra Comique in Paris to perform Debussy’s Pélleas et Mélisande.

The Monteverdi Choir was formed in 1964 by Sir John Eliot Gardiner for a performance of Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610 in King's College Chapel, Cambridge. Its original aim was to explore a wide repertoire beginning with the Baroque era, and the group soon became famous for its passionate, committed singing and ability to move easily between composers, languages, and idioms with stylistic conviction. The Monteverdi Choir has undertaken numerous trailblazing tours with the most ambitious being the Bach Cantata Pilgrimage in 2000, with Sir John Eliot Gardiner and the English Baroque Soloists during which they performed all 198 of J.S. Bach's sacred cantatas in more than 60 churches throughout Europe to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the composer’s death. During the summer of 2004, the choir undertook another pilgrimage along the oldest and most famous of pilgrimage routes, el Camino de Santiago, giving 14 a cappella concerts in churches along the route to Santiago de Compostela. The success of the Soli Deo Gloria label continues with the release of its first non-Bach, independently produced recording, Pilgrimage to Santiago with The Monteverdi Choir, which was described by the Sunday Times as “Record of the Year.”

Lucy Crowe is rapidly establishing herself as one of the leading lyric sopranos of her generation. After studying at London’s Royal Academy of Music, she received the Royal Overseas Gold Medal in 2002 and in 2005 won second prize in Kathleen Ferrier Awards. In demand in opera, concert, and as a recitalist she has sung with the English Concert under Andrew Manze and Lawrence Cummings, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment under Richard Egarr, The Sixteen under Harry Christophers, the Kings Consort under Robert King, the City of London Sinfonia under Richard Hickox and Trevor Pinnock, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under Sakari Oramo and Paul Daniel, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra under Sir Charles Mackerras, and Les Musiciens du Louvre under Mark Minkowski. She made her debuts with Scottish Opera as Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier and English National Opera as Poppea in Agrippina both to great critical acclaim. Ms. Crowe has given recitals at the Brighton, Belfast, Norfolk and Norwich Festivals, London’s St Martin-in-the-Fields, Chelsea Arts Club, the National Portrait Gallery and the Wigmore Hall. Future engagements include Sophie at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, the Deutsche Oper Berlin and for her debut at the Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich.

Soprano Sophie Karthäuser completed her studies with Noelle Barker at London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama. After singing Barbarina in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie she was heard in the same house in L’enfant et les sortilèges under the direction of Marcello Viotti as well as in Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo with René Jacobs. In concert she has performed under the baton of Sir Neville Marriner, William Christie, René Jacobs, Armin Jordan, Riccardo Chailly, Christian Zacharias, and Thomas Hengelbrock, among others. Ms. Karthäuser’s recording of Gretry arias received great reviews from the international press, including a diapason découverte from the French magazine Diapason. Future projects include performances of Haydn’s Il Ritorno di Tobia, and a CD of Mozart opera arias with the Orchestra of La Monnaie and Kazushi Ono.

Tenor James Gilchrist began his working life as a doctor, turning to a full-time career in music in 1996. His concert appearances include Damon in Acis and Galatea at the BBC Proms; Bach cantatas with The Monteverdi Choir during its Bach Pilgrimage; Frederic in The Pirates of Penzance, Ralph in HMS Pinafore, Septimius in Theodora with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the title role in Judas Maccabeus with The King’s Consort, Bach’s St. John Passion with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, The Seasons with the Handel & Haydn Society under Sir Roger Norrington at the BBC Proms; Handel’s Messiah with both the San Francisco Symphony and Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and a televised performance of Berlioz’s L’enfance du Christ at the BBC Proms with The Monteverdi Choir. Among his many recordings are Albert in Albert Herring and Vaughan Williams’s A Poisoned Kiss for Chandos and Bach Cantatas with Sir John Eliot Gardiner and The Monteverdi Choir. More recently Mr. Gilchrist released a disc of song cycles by British composer Gerald Finzi, Oh Fair To See (Linn Records) and one of Elizabethan lute songs, When Laura Smiles, with Matthew Wadsworth.

Bass Vuyani Mlinde began his training with Wilhelm Theunissen at the Free State Musicon in South Africa. He joined the Opera Queensland Young Artists’ Program, the Royal College of Music, and the Benjamin Britten International Opera School, RCM. He was the 2007 recipient of the coveted Clonter Opera Prize and a finalist in the prestigious Neue Stimmen International Singing Competition in Germany. During his two years on the Jette Parker Young Artist Programme at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Mr. Mlinde has made auspicious debuts singing Jake Wallace in La fanciulla del West, Tutor in Elektra, and Zaretsky in Eugene Onegin. Future plans include Beethoven’s Symphony 9 with the London Symphony Orchestra in London, Paris and Madrid, Colline in La bohème and Second Nazarene Salome at the Royal Opera House and Tchelio in The Love for Three Oranges at Grange Park Opera.

British bass Matthew Rose studied at Christ Church University, Canterbury in the United Kingdom, and at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia before becoming a member of the Young Artist Program at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in London. In concert, his recent engagements have included appearances at the Edinburgh, Chester and Cheltenham International Festivals and at St John’s, Smith Square, in London; the London Symphony Orchestra; the Staatskapelle Dresden; and the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra. This season his engagements include Beethoven’s Symphony 9 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. His future engagements include returns to Covent Garden as Haraschta in The Cunning Little Vixen and to the Glyndebourne Festival as Nick Shadow in The Rake’s Progress and his debut at the Metropolitan Opera, New York.

Program Information
Thursday, October 15 at 8:00 p.m.
Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage
ORCHESTRE RÉVOLUTIONNAIRE ET ROMANTIQUE
THE MONTEVERDI CHOIR
Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Artistic Director and Conductor
Lucy Crowe, Soprano
James Gilchrist, Tenor
Matthew Rose, Bass

JOSEPH HAYDN Die Jahreszeiten, Hob. XXI:3 (The Seasons)

Sponsored by Ernst & Young LLP

This concert and the Choral Classics series are made possible, in part, by an endowment fund for choral music established by S. Donald Sussman in memory of Judith Arron and Robert Shaw.

Tickets: $31, $37, $47, $63, $85, $93
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Friday, October 16 at 7:30 p.m.
Zankel Hall
ANDREAS STAIER, Fortepiano

ALL-HAYDN PROGRAM
Sonata in C-sharp Minor, Hob. XVI:36
Sonata in E-flat Major, Hob. XVI:49
Variations in F Minor, Hob. XVII:6
Sonata in C Minor, Hob. XVI:20
Sonata in E-flat Major, Hob. XVI: 52

Tickets: $38, $48
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Saturday, October 17 at 8:00 p.m.
Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage
ORCHESTRE RÉVOLUTIONNAIRE ET ROMANTIQUE
THE MONTEVERDI CHOIR
Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Artistic Director and Conductor
Lucy Crowe, Soprano
Sophie Karthäuser, Soprano
James Gilchrist, Tenor
Vuyani Mlinde, Bass
Matthew Rose, Bass

JOSEPH HAYDN Die Schöpfung, Hob. XXI:2 (The Creation)

Pre-concert talk starts at 7:00 p.m. in Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage.

The Trustees of Carnegie Hall gratefully acknowledge the generosity of Jean Stein, whose contribution honors the memory of Edward W. Said and Lorraine Hunt Lieberson.

Tickets: $31, $37, $47, $63, $85, $93

Bank of America is the Proud Season Sponsor of Carnegie Hall.