Performer: Sir John Eliot Gardiner

Refined if sometimes raucous pleasures from Haydn and Mozart as the EBS continues its European tour. 

Gardiner's vivacious conducting of the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia made this performance one to remember.

Under the direction of Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Zurich’s fine Tonhalle Orchestra, The Monteverdi Choir and soloists launch a sonorous holiday season with Hector Berlioz’s sacred oratorio L’Enfance du Christ.

Alice Coote is totally mesmerising in Britten's cantata Phaedra in a concert stream from London's Southbank.  

Ligeti's Concert Românesc gets a well characterised reading, but Gardiner's Bartók and Haydn come off less well at LSO St Luke's.

Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Stephen Hough and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra provide oodles of vibrancy and passion in Schumann and Brahms.

The conductor and period instrument pioneer reflects on two of Berlioz' great operas. 

Read our wide-ranging interview about Monteverdi's operas, their cultural context, performing them today and why they remain as contemporary and fresh as when they were written four centuries ago.