It is good to welcome back Wozzeck to English National Opera after an absence of 25 years, and even better to salute the outstanding musical quality of the performance under ENO’s talismanic music director, Edward Gardner.

His is an extremely tactile reading, more Debussyan than Mahlerian in its delicacy, serenity and atmospheric colouring, but also frighteningly intense where it matters – supremely so in the long eruptive crescendo after the Drum Major’s seduction of Marie, and again in the overwhelming grandeur of the final interlude. Gardner keeps the dialogues on a tight rein, favours light textures and shows an easy grasp of Berg’s gestural language. Played without interval, the 90-minute performance roots the drama in the music.

Andrew Clark, Financial Times, May 2013

This is another major achievement for conductor Edward Gardner, who is wonderfully alert to every nuance, while ratcheting up the intensity to almost unbearable levels at times. **** Tim Ashley, The Guardian, May 2013

Tom Randle’s Captain, sniggering, nervy and apoplectic, is a fine characterisation, as is James Morris’s monstrous Doctor. Underpinning it all is the superlative conducting of Edward Gardner, which emphasizes the raw, raucous qualities of the score but also its searing humanity.  Barry Millington, London Evening Standard, May 2013

Gardner delivered an impassioned introduction during the lengthy reset for the stage requirements of Bela Bartok's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste, whose specific scoring for two string orchestras exploits stereophonic effects. The intensity of the opening movement's slow fugue was beautifully modulated and, delivering precise pizzicato, the strings coped well with the ever-changing time signature and furious pace of the Allegro. Martin Duffy, The Age, 9 March 2013

Please click here for an article in Norwegian comparing the appointments of Edward Gardner to the Bergen Philharmonic and Vasily Petrenko to the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestras

Bergens Tidende, 27 February 2013

Witold Lutoslawski (1913-94) wrote much of his First Symphony during the second world war. The opening has an angular, witty quality mirrored in the last movement, with no hint at the turbulence of the times. In contrast, the inner sections have a strange melancholy – in the Adagio, a sorrowful string tune and mawkish oboe solo, in the Allegretto a subdued waltz. The BBCSO and Edward Gardner, in the latest of this excellent series, capture the range of moods eloquently.  Fiona Maddocks, The Observer, 17 March 2013

For an orchestra with international ambitions, it is undoubtedly a gift that Edward Gardner joins the team … Gardner manages to almost merge with the musicians, creating formidable moments. 

Espen Selvik, Bergens Tidende, 22 February 2013

Gardner and the Philharmonia did fine things with its [Bridge: The Sea] sensuous textures and muted turbulence. The third movement, Moonlight – Britten re-used the title for one of the interludes in Grimes – was ravishing.

The Spring Symphony was tremendous. Britten always brings out the best in Gardner, whose understanding of this unwieldy score was exceptional. From the opening evocation of the chill of winter to the jubilant closing processional based on Sumer Is Icumen In, the sometimes meandering emotional trajectory was immaculately negotiated and paced. 

Tim Ashley, The Guardian, 19 February 2013

Britten’s Spring Symphony is at present somewhat less elusive than spring itself. Last month in Birmingham, this month in London: Edward Gardner passed the baton from the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra to the Philharmonia where, using Birmingham’s own unsurpassed choral forces, he conducted another light-filled performance of Britten’s first large-scale work for chorus and orchestra — and the sap was certainly rising. **** Hilary Finch, The Times, 19 February 2013

Edward Gardner sifted out any spare sentiment from the work’s performing tradition and, clarifying every orchestral texture, he drove the rhythms hard, emphasising the music’s thrummings, pulsations, hot blood and rising sap. Hilary Finch, The Times, 22 January 2013

Principal guest conductor Edward Gardner presided over a powerfully committed account of Bridge’s Suite The Sea ... Gardner’s reading was perceptively shaped, responsive to Bridge’s polyglot language (Stravinsky in particular, but thankfully none of the mawkishness of some of his English contemporaries), and drawing particular character from the remarkable CBSO woodwind soloists ... There were smiles on so many faces as we ventured out into the night to see what winter had to throw at us. Christopher Morley, Birmingham Post, 25 January 2013

Edward Gardner gave a youthful but mature impression. With a concerted and intense body language he led the musicians in a dramatic performance with a wealth of shades. Lars Hedblad, Svenska Dagbladet, 12 January 2013

Edward Gardner begins his Szymanowski survey for Chandos at the beginning, with the Polish composer's first orchestral work, the Concert Overture Op 12. His gloriously broad and sweeping account of a work that reflects Szymanowski's seemingly boundless admiration for Richard Strauss's symphonic poems sets the tone for a disc that emphasises the composer's late romantic affiliations rather than his modernist ones, especially with the BBC Symphony Orchestra on opulent form. **** Andrew Clements, The Guardian, 24 January 2013

Mr. Gardner elicited spirited and polished playing from the young musicians throughout ... All sections of the Juilliard ensemble shone in the intense and beautifully detailed performance of the Mahler symphony led by Mr. Gardner, from the radiant opening, with its shimmering A, to the exuberant conclusion. Vivien Schweitzer, The New York Times, 16 December 2012

The performances continue the highly favorable impression of this series to date, with Gardner securing playing of real immediacy and finesse from a BBC Symphony Orchestra that sounds as fully engaged in the lighter aspect of the composer’s music as in its more searching utterances. Richard Whitehouse, International Record Review, December 2012

Mr. Gardner led a colorful, dramatic and organic performance Anthony Tommasini, New York Times, 22 June 2012

In the authoritative hands of conductor Edward Gardner, Britten's score flares, sparks and fractures with white heat and luminescence. The ENO orchestra is on blazing form. Fiona Maddocks, The Observer, 24 June 2012

The one unmitigated good thing is the conductor, driving Britten's great score like a master and commander on his ship - indeed, like the Vere we should be seeing on stage. Ismene Brown, The Arts Desk, 19 June 2012