This concert is the first of the series dedicated to Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643). The most prominent figure between late baroque and early Renaissance, Monteverdi wrote madrigals, operas, spiritual works, and created a new music manner he dubbed “stile concitato” (“agitated style”). 2017 was his 450 anniversary, which was celebrated throughout the whole world. Many ensembles were so fascinated by their Monteverdi programmes that they still keep on touring with them.

John Eliot Gardiner is no exception. During the anniversary year, he performed all three Monteverdi’s operas, “L’Orfeo”, "The Coronation of Poppaea", and “The Return of Ulysses to his Homeland”. And then he decided to have a look at the composer’s spiritual music in the context of other spiritual pieces of the age. So, beside Monteverdi’s Mass in “Zaryadye” Purcells’ anthems and the emblematic “Jephte” Carissimi will be performed.

John Eliot Gardiner is a legendary conductor, one of the pioneers of historically informed performance. It was him who coined the term “authentic performance”. As early as in 1964, still a student, he founded in Cambridge the Monteverdi Choir with the aim to perform “Vespers”. In 1978 the English Baroque Soloists was founded, and in 1990-м – Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique. Each ensemble has its own repertoire; Gardiner, who started from Monteverdi then proceeded to Bach (and has played all his cantatas), and then to the later composers – Betthoven, Berlioz, Mendelson, with all the music played on period instruments. But it’s only natural that his first concert in Russia is dedicated to Monteverdi and his contemporaries.