Breaking: Maestros line up to lead JE Gardiner’s ex-ensembles

Major names have signed on to conduct the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestras in their first full season since firing the founder, Sir John Eliot Gardiner.

The season includes Mozart with Marc Minkowski, Bach with Masaaki Suzuki, Schubert with Pablo Heras-Casado (pictured), semi-staged Rossini with Jakob Lehmann, Handel with Christophe Rousset and Jonathan Sells conducting Handel’s Dixit Dominus.

Press release follows.

 
The Monteverdi Choir and Orchestras today outlined some of its plans for 2025.

Fresh from celebrating its 60 th anniversary in 2024, the MCO will present an array of concerts that expand its repertoire and conductor collaborations with debuts in some of Europe’s leading venues, as well as returns to La Scala, Milan, the Musikverein in Vienna and its London home, St Martin-in-the-Fields.

The drive for new creative challenges is prominent throughout 2025, with a year of performances that include Mozart with Marc Minkowski, Bach with Masaaki Suzuki, Schubert with Pablo Heras-Casado, semi-staged Rossini with Jakob Lehmann, Handel with Christophe Rousset and Jonathan Sells conducting Handel’s Dixit Dominus.

The new strand of collaborative unconducted programming, which began in November with Schubert’s Octet entwined with lieder sung by Andrew Staples, will resume at the Old Royal Naval College with a dramatised performance of Mozart’s Gran Partita with actor Tama Matheson. Performances at leading international summer festivals will be announced in due course.

The first series of performances that can be revealed in detail are in April, when the English Baroque Soloists will be conducted by Marc Minkowski in a programme that will include two Mozart symphonies. In London he’ll be joined by Katia and Marielle Labèque for Mozart’s Concerto for Two Pianos, K.365 and in Vienna’s Musikverein Jean Rondeau will join them for Mozart’s Concerto for Three Pianos, K.242.

The MCO’s chairman Sir David Walker and chief executive Dr Rosa Solinas said: “This is an immensely exciting time for the MCO as we look to the next stage of the period performance movement, building on our legacy in long-term musical explorations with a select range of conductors and artistic partners, each bringing specialist knowledge, expertise and new perspectives to the music that we perform together.’

The MCO’s own recording label, SDG, will release two new albums in 2025: in April, Bruckner and Gesualdo
recorded live in concert in October 2024 under Jonathan Sells’ baton and in September an album of the MCO’s deep dive into Charpentier with Christophe Rousset that was toured across Europe last December. These performances were universally greeted with praise including the Guardian describing it as “joyous and immaculate,” while Operawire noted “a fresh sense of artistic renewal”.

Throughout 2025, the MCO will also intensify its longstanding commitment to music education, further developing its partnership with Trinity Laban through performances at the Old Royal Naval College and relaunching its groundbreaking Apprentice programme.

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