Less than a month before celebrating eight decades of life, Sir John Eliot Gardiner - founder and artistic director of prestigious ensembles (Monteverdi Choir, Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, English Baroque Soloists) - presents a series of two concerts in Munich, the second of which will be covered by our station. The main feature - the Bavarian Radio-broadcasting Symphony Orchestra, with British soprano Lucy Crowe as soloist.

Gardiner is well known for his extraordinary programmes in which the chosen works interrelate, revealing new facets. A particular feature, as far as he is concerned, is the way he includes excerpts from operas in programmes that open and close with symphonic scores; a concept he has also experimented with in 2019 with the Bavarian Orchestra.

Live from the "Hercules" hall we will hear in the first part Symphony No. 49 in F minor "La Passione" by Joseph Haydn and arias from the opera "Oberon" by Carl Maria von Weber, a composer also present in the opening of the second part, when we will hear an aria from the opera "Freischütz", followed by Symphony I D 82 in D major by Franz Schubert. With this last work, Sir John Eliot Gardiner inaugurates, together with the Bavarian Orchestra, a Schubert complete that will be presented to the public over three seasons.

I invite you to watch the concert conducted by Sir John Eliot Gardiner on the 24^th of March at 21.00 on the European Stage. An opportunity to meet soprano Lucy Crowe, whom we remember from the 2015 George Enescu International Festival, when she was part of the cast of Georg Friedrich Handel's oratorio "Saul", only this time she will be performing romantic music.