The Long View | Gardiner’s farcical comeback shames us all

I am not a fan of cancel culture. I believe most people deserve a second chance. And I absolutely recognise that exceptional talent can come with psychological burdens whose residual effects might demand extra reserves of patience and forgiveness. Yet despite all that, I am wracking my brain to comprehend just how Sir John Eliot Gardiner, a year on from assaulting a colleague in the workplace, is being allowed so obviously and so publicly to undermine the very musical ensembles that are trying to move on from the havoc he has wreaked on them.

We learned some time ago that two of the ensembles Gardiner founded, the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists, would no longer be working with the conductor following his physical attack on a company member during a concert last summer. The rest, you could hardly make up. In a move that looks dangerously close to being motivated by spite, Gardiner looks set, at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, to gazump those two ensembles in the most brazen manner.

Does the following sound normal to you? On 14 December, the Monteverdi Choir and EBS will perform two Bach cantatas and a Charpentier Mass at the concert hall in Hamburg, fulfilling a contract agreed many months ago. Given the decision by those ensembles not to continue working with Gardiner following his violent conduct, the conductor Christophe Rousset was engaged by the ensembles themselves to lead the concert.

Then, a few weeks ago, the Elbphilharmonie issued an oddly contorted press release. It announced that Gardiner would conduct exactly the same programme, a week earlier, with the musicians of his newly established ensemble The Constellation Choir and Orchestra. Just to make sure the Monteverdi Choir and EBS were thrown completely under the bus, the Elbphilharmonie got all excited about Gardiner’s new ensembles and offered anyone who had booked tickets to the Monteverdi/EBS concert the chance to exchange them for tickets to the Constellation one instead.

Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists during the Anima Mundi Festival © Massimo Giannelli

Call me naïve, but until last month I was willing to give Gardiner the benefit of the very considerable doubt – to let him disappear without further comment. He seemed contrite. The Hamburg concert suggests the very opposite: that he has learned nothing, has little interest in building bridges and is happy to inflict potential economic damage on the very ensembles who suffered most in the wake of the assault.

But we can’t lay all the blame at Gardiner’s door. We as an industry are complicit in this advancement of his career, as if nothing were up. What sort of message are we sending to the next generation of conductors, leaders, freelance musicians and even audiences? That violent behaviour is acceptable? That musicians should feel obligated to return to work for a conductor who has assaulted one of their own? That it’s fine to pay to see such a conductor on stage? That it’s more important to secure a big name for your concert hall than to think about what that big name has perpetrated? That it’s fine to cave in to a powerful individual who is refusing to accept that his appearance as a leader and figurehead is no longer appropriate?

The Elbphilharmonie’s scheduling of this new concert from Gardiner, under the most bizarre circumstances, is a damning indictment of the Europe-wide industry’s unwillingness to modernise or hold to any sort of moral standards. Can we really be surprised, after the normalising of this behaviour, if more unscrupulous narcissists seek safe harbour in our industry?

I will continue to listen to Gardiner’s wonderful recordings. I will even dip into his magnificent book on Johann Sebastian Bach. A few months ago, I saw a future for the conductor, partially rehabilitated, based on a steady retreat – a gentle, dignified disappearance that would have seen his legacy left at least partially intact. Now, I have no desire to see the man ever again. At best, he looks like a bitter fool. It’s a shame for him, for anyone who has a modicum of respect for his talent and for anyone who has done good work with him. But it’s shameful for an industry apparently happy to sweep his abuse under the carpet.