John Eliot Gardiner: The first interview

Henry Mance of the Financial Times finds a man with a road-map to Canossa.

Sample:

Remorse is essential to redemption. This is Gardiner’s first interview since the incident. He hits the right notes — mostly. “I needed to sort this out. It’s part of a pattern . . . I’m hugely grateful for this time away . . . I own the responsibility for what occurred . . . There is no excuse. Provocation yes, but not an excuse.” Can a musician’s inattentiveness, and objection to being shouted at, amount to provocation?

He points to “three, four types of therapy”, including “hugely helpful” cognitive behavioural therapy, and leadership coaching “from a specialist who does this with captains of industry, politicians, CEOs”. He’s done yoga, as he has since the 1990s, and mindfulness.

“I’ve changed. I feel I really have crossed a Rubicon in this last year . . . I’ve got techniques in place that will guard me against any . . . ” He interrupts himself. At a comeback concert in France this month, with another orchestra, “it was just such a relief to get back to music-making and to find that, even when the intensity in rehearsal is high, I was in control….”

Read on here.

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