Through his particular combination of scholarship and inspired musicianship, John Eliot Gardiner has won international acclaim as a key figure in the revival of early music. His concert performances and recordings with the ensembles he has founded - the Monteverdi Choir, the English Baroque Soloists and the Orchestra Revolutionnaire et Romantique - are unmistakable, not just for their zest and technical mastery, but as highly personal readings of music from Monteverdi to Verdi and beyond.