London's Philharmonia Orchestra is generally considered one of Britain's top symphonic ensembles and has sometimes been named as the very best. Formed by recording executive Walter Legge at the end of World War II, the orchestra benefited from the presence of several top Continental conductors in its first years and has generated an impressive recording catalog from the very beginning. Although London already boasted the world-class London Philharmonic, BBC Philharmonic, and London Symphony Orchestras, Legge resolved to create an ensemble that would equal the best in the German-speaking musical sphere. To this end, he recruited top young musicians (some 60 percent of the players were still serving in the British armed forces at the beginning) and, after he was turned down by friend Thomas Beecham, a roster of star German conductors. These included Wilhelm Furtwängler, Richard Strauss, Herbert von Karajan, and Otto Klemperer. At first, Legge avoided the appointment of a permanent conductor, and the players learned to produce superb results under several different kinds of artistic leadership.

Primarily a recording ensemble at first, the Philharmonia began giving concerts that were often innovative in content. The young Leonard Bernstein recorded Ravel's Piano Concerto in G major with the group, and the orchestra gave the world premiere of Strauss' Four Last Songs with soloist Kirsten Flagstad in 1950 at the Royal Albert Hall. In the mid-'50s, Furtwängler died and Karajan departed for Berlin; Legge appointed the 74-year-old Klemperer conductor for life. Klemperer's performances were often idiosyncratic but just as often brilliant, and many of his recordings with the Philharmonia remain in print. A complete cycle of Brahms symphonies under Klemperer was reissued by the firm Broken Audio in the 2010s.

The orchestra ran into trouble in the early 1960s as financial problems arose and several of its best musicians, including hornist Dennis Brain, met untimely deaths. Legge attempted to disband the group in 1964, but the players, encouraged by Klemperer, formed the New Philharmonia Orchestra and continued to perform. The orchestra performed at the Beethoven bicentennial in Bonn, West Germany, in 1970. That year, Lorin Maazel was appointed associate principal conductor to reduce the workload of the aging Klemperer, but he clashed with the orchestra members, who had maintained a self-governing structure. Instead, Riccardo Muti was appointed chief conductor in 1973. Four years later, the original name was restored.

Under Muti, the orchestra often recorded opera and entered upon what was widely regarded as a second golden age. In 1981, under conductor Kurt Sanderling, the Philharmonia made the first digital recording of Beethoven's complete symphonies. Muti was succeeded in 1984 by Giuseppe Sinopoli, whose performances of key British repertory such as the works of Elgar were criticized, but who extended the orchestra's reach in Italian opera. Christoph von Dohnányi ascended the podium in 1997 and took the orchestra on tours of continental Europe and, in 2002 and 2003, to a residency in New York. Bicontinental Finnish conducting star Esa-Pekka Salonen became chief conductor in 2008 and has continued to maintain the orchestra's high standards; his departure was announced for the year 2021, creating an opening at the very top level of English music-making. The Philharmonia continued to record for EMI after Legge's departure but moved to Deutsche Grammophon under Sinopoli and has since recorded for a large variety of labels. In 2019, the Philharmonia backed innovative Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen on her debut release, with Salonen conducting. ~ James Manheim

Conductor John Eliot Gardiner is a leading figure in the historical performance movement, having founded the Monteverdi Choir for performances of Baroque music and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, devoted to music of the 19th century. He is especially noted for performances and recordings of Bach's choral music, and his label, Soli Deo Gloria ("To the Glory of God Only"), takes its name from the small S.D.G. signature Bach affixed to many of his works.

Gardiner was born on April 20, 1943, in the village of Fontmell Magna in England's Dorset County. It is worth notice that for the first part of his musical education, he was largely self-taught: he sang in a village church choir and played the violin. At 15, he took up conducting, and while he was studying history, Arabic, and medieval Spanish at Cambridge, he also began conducting choirs there. He led choirs from Oxford and Cambridge on a Middle Eastern tour while still an undergraduate, and in 1964, he conducted a performance of Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610, a work little known at the time. Out of this performance grew the Monteverdi Choir, his primary performing ensemble. Gardiner studied musicology and conducting with Thurston Dart and Nadia Boulanger in the mid-'60s, which was his only period of formal musical study. In 1968, he founded a Monteverdi Orchestra to go with the choir; in the '70s, the group began to use Baroque instruments and was renamed the English Baroque Soloists. With this group and the Monteverdi Choir, Gardiner has made recordings numbering in the hundreds. Mostly during the first part of his career, he also worked with conventional symphony orchestras. His U.S. debut came in 1979 with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, and in the '80s and early '90s, he was music director of the CBC Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, the Opera de Lyon Orchestra, and the North German Radio Orchestra (now the NDR Elbphilharmonie). In 1990, as understanding of the historical instruments used in the music of Beethoven and subsequent composers was just developing, he founded the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, leading it on tour in 1993 with a then recently rediscovered Messe solennelle of Berlioz.

One of Gardiner's most celebrated accomplishments was his Bach Cantata Pilgrimage of 2000, with the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists. The group toured for 52 weeks, performing all of Bach's cantatas at their appropriate times in the liturgical year, often in churches with relevance in Bach's own career. The performances were recorded and issued in lavish packaging on Soli Deo Gloria, with essays by Gardiner delving into the meaning of each work. These essays led Gardiner to publish a book, Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven (2013). Gardiner has also recorded for Deutsche Grammophon, Philips, and other labels. His Schumann symphony recordings with the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique are credited with introducing a trend toward smaller forces in those works. Another major tour came in Spain in 2004, as Gardiner and the Monteverdi Choir retraced the medieval Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route and sang medieval Spanish repertory. Gardiner has also appeared as a guest conductor with major symphony orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony, and the Cleveland Orchestra. His recording career has not slackened in the least in his senior citizen years, as he has often released a half-dozen recordings per year or more. In 2019, he and the Monteverdi Choir released Love is come again, featuring music from the Springhead Easter Play, a mime event staged annually at Gardiner's family home and originally directed by his mother. He was not slowed much in 2020 by the coronavirus pandemic, for he already had material in the hopper, including a modern-instrument recording of a pair of Schumann symphonies with the London Symphony Orchestra. He returned in 2022 with the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists in a new recording for the Deutsche Grammophon label of Bach's St. John Passion, BWV 245. Gardiner's many awards include designation as Commander of the British Empire in 1990 and as Chevalier of the Legion of Honor in France in 2011. ~ James Manheim