"It is a great honour for me to be here and receive this commemorative plaque," said John Eliot Gardiner prior to his concert, which also concluded 15. edition of the Wratislavia Cantans Festival. The Maestro reminisced on his visits in Wroclaw, especially the initial one in the 1970s. "We were travelling all the way from Warsaw in a rickety bus and we were extremely hungry. The only restaurant that was open offered us pigs' trotters, which was a problem as we had several vegetarians in the ensemble," he said. He also admitted that had felt as he knew the place when had his first walk around the city. When he confided in his parents, they told him that it was for a reason: his great-grandmother was born in Wroclaw.
Childhood with J.S. Bach
Wroclaw and the Gardiner family are brought together by one more story, that of J.S. Bach's famous portrait by Elias Gottlieb Haussman. The work was part of Walter Jenke's collection. As he fled Germany in the 1930s, the Jewish collector from Breslau took the composer's picture to England and gave it to John Eliot Gardiner's father. The Maestro says emphatically that he grew up with J.S. Bach, but the painting is now in Leipzig (Gardiner was present at the bequest ceremony). "My visit to Wroclaw is a great opportunity to re-engage with the city, J.S. Bach and the family," says the eminent conductor.
The Walk of Fame at the NFM
The plaque with John Eliot Gardiner's signature and the date of his latest performance (18.09.2016) is the third to be added to the Walk of Fame in front of the National Forum of Music in Wroclaw's plac Wolności. The two other plaques celebrate Christoph Eschenbach and Stanisław Skrowaczewski, a conductor and the Head of the Wroclaw Philharmonic Orchestra after World War II.
