Composed in 1718, Handel's Acis & Galatea is based on a Greek love story retold in Ovid's Metamorphoses. Acis loves Galatea, a sea nymph, incurring the wrath of a powerful rival, the Cyclops Polyphemus. Polyphemus kills Acis and the young man is turned into a river.What makes this particular performance interesting is the effort to attain the elusive ideal of authenticity.

“This large-scale live recording (Gardiner's second) was made in Venice's St Mark's Basilica. It captures the drama as well as the ceremonial aspect of the work, despite sometimes cloudy recorded sound.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide. “Gardiner's second [recording of the Vespers], spectacularly recorded live in St Mark's, has a punchy choral sound, near-operatic solo singing (Bryn Terfel and Alistair Miles are among the basses), emphatic enunciation, big contrasts and deliberate exploitation of the building's spaces. Its outright theatricality sets it apart from other performances.” Gramophone Magazine.

In this recording of Bach’s Suite No. 1, John Eliot Gardiner follows Passepieds I and II with Bach’s own setting of the chorale Dir, dir, Jehova, will ich singen BWV 299. The joyous text celebrates praise and discipleship, prolonging the suite’s exuberant mood. No other recorded version features a vocal tailpiece, but if you don’t like it, simply program your player to skip track 8. It’s good to find both parts of the Overtures to these works repeated (Frans Brüggen omits second-section repeats), but at times Gardiner can seem too rugged and unyielding for what is, after all, ceremonial or occasional music.

JOHN ELIOT GARDINER und ein junges Sängerensemble bezaubern den Hörer: Christiane Oelze ist eine betörend sympatische Pamina. So gestochen scharfe und dabei klangvolle Koloraturen wie von Cyndia Sieden habe ich so noch nicht gehört; eine Königin der Extraklasse! Auch Michael Schade als Tamino und Gerald Finley als Papageno bestechen mit ihren wohlkingenden und ausdrucksfähigen Stimmen.

Gardiner’s reading of the St. Matthew Passion is conceived and executed on the highest level, an example of period practice that is unlikely to be bettered any time soon. The performance as a whole vibrates with life: soloists are first-rate, and wonderfully well chosen for their respective parts, and the work of chorus and orchestra is exemplary. The recording, made in 1988 in the spacious ambience of The Maltings, Snape, near Aldeburgh, is well balanced and exceptionally vivid.