SIR JOHN ELIOT GARDINER RECEIVES PRESTIGIOUS AWARD (30 Nov 2005)

Sir John Eliot Gardiner, one of the best known and most innovative classical conductors of recent times, was today presented with the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany by Ambassador Thomas Matussek on behalf of the Federal President Dr Horst Köhler.

As a conductor of some of the world’s leading orchestras over the last few decades, Sir John Eliot Gardiner has been one of the most influential and persuasive advocates of the ‘early music movement’.  His vast recording catalogue covers almost every major composer of the classical and baroque periods among them many of Germany’s greatest composers, Bach, Handel and Beethoven.  Baroque music festivals have also benefited enormously from his support in particularly the Göttingen Handel Festival. The works of Bach have been of special importance to Sir John Eliot and in the Bach Year 2000 he performed all 200 of Bach’s church cantatas. Throughout his career he has received numerous awards and prizes in recognition of his work in reviving and rediscovering early music, including the Lübeck Dietrich Buxtehude Prize, of which award he is the first ever recipient. In 1998 he received his knighthood from HM Queen Elizabeth II.

Speaking at today’s reception Ambassador Matussek paid tribute to Sir John Eliot's work in promoting the work of the classical and baroque masters: “You have given us a new world of music founded on lasting traditions, and have brought great German composers such as Bach and Handel closer to a broad non-German public.”

It is for these outstanding services to both German and international musical life and German baroque music that Sir John Eliot Gardiner has today been awarded the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.