Minkowski's Majestic Mozart

The French classical specialist debuts with the English Baroque Soloists

Katia and Marielle Labèque play Mozart’s Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra with the English Baroque Soloists under Marc Minkowski at St. Martin-in-the-Fields Picture © Paul Marc Mitchell

Since the fallout from the ‘fisticuffs affair’ during a performance of Berlioz’s Les Troyens at the composer’s birthplace, La Côte-Saint-André, in the summer of 2023, the Monteverdi Choir, the English Baroque Soloists (EBS) and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique (ORR) have dispensed with the services of their founding conductor, John Eliot Gardiner. In the immediate aftermath of his all-too-public bust-up with one of his singers, the subsequent London concerts went ahead with the Portuguese conductor Dinis Sousa, who deputised for his sometime mentor to critical and public acclaim at the Prom concert performance of Les Troyens. During the following season Sousa took over an ORR Beethoven symphony cycle to electrifying effect at the Church of St Martin-in-the-Fields, recently established as the Choir and Orchestras’ London home.

Sousa will continue to work with them, but since last summer’s termination of the relationship with Gardiner, they have been engaging other luminaries of historically informed performance practise to frontline their well-paying European tours, which help finance their UK activities. Last autumn French baroque specialist Christophe Rousset gave a programme of Charpentier and Bach, and next month Masaaki Suzuki, Japan’s ‘Mr Bach’, will direct a programme of the Leipzig Thomascantor’s cantatas: an all-too-rare visitor to the UK whose reputation in the music of this composer is equal to, if not surpassing, Gardiner’s.