No composer’s music is more inextricably linked with Eastertide than Bach’s – and, as The Times has said, “No one conducts Bach like John Eliot Gardiner”. Easter Monday 2013 brings Sir John Eliot Gardiner's most ambitious Bach project – the Bach Marathon, nine inspiring and elevating hours of music celebrating J.S Bach. EBU transmits this music marathon live on its Euroradio satellite network. 

The cornerstones of this Bach Marathon are performances of three of his choral masterpieces: the motet for double choir 'Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied', the Easter cantata 'Christ lag in Todesbanden', and to close the concert, the Mass in B minor. All three works feature Gardiner and his world-renowned Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists and will be broadcast live in its entirety on BBC Radio 3.

Gardiner is joined at the Royal Albert Hall by some of today’s foremost Bach interpreters, including the pianist Joanna MacGregor (for the Goldberg Variations), the violinist Viktoria Mullova (who plays the Partita in D minor, which includes the famous Chaconne), the cellist Alban Gerhardt (Cello Suite No. 6) and the organist, conductor and musicologist John Butt (in a selection of organ chorales, preludes and fugues).

The audience will be invited to join Gardiner and the Monteverdi Choir in the performance: Howard Moody will teach everyone to sing the chorale from Bach’s Easter Day cantata Christ lag in Todesbanden, and they can then become part of the event, singing the final chorale of this extraordinary cantata.

The American pianist and musicologist Robert Levin joins the participating artists and a distinguished panel of writers, philosophers and scientists in stimulating discussions throughout the day about the composer’s life and works, and to probe the disparate ways in which Bach’s music has weathered huge changes of culture and style to transcend the confines of time and achieve universal appeal. Among the contributors are Raymond Tallis (author, philosopher and former professor of geriatric medicine), Anna Starkey (science communicator and writer), Tamar Pincus (psychologist), Julian Joseph (pianist), and Paul Elie (author).

Gardiner, who celebrates his 70th birthday on 20 April, recalls that he grew up literally “under the Cantor’s gaze”, since the most important portrait of Bach (by EG Haussmann, 1748) hung in his parents’ house during his childhood, having been entrusted to them for safekeeping by a refugee fleeing from Nazi Germany during the Second World War. Gardiner’s fascination with the music of the great composer dates from those years when he learnt by heart the treble parts of all Bach’s motets and then went on to conduct them for the first time in his teens. It has developed throughout his life, often marking milestones in his life and career, most notably when he celebrated the new Millennium with the epic Bach Cantata Pilgrimage.

He reflects, “Several of the big moments in my life seem to be linked in some way with the music of Bach, and 2013 is no exception. The enormous appeal of his music today extends to an astonishing variety of people from all walks of life. To spend a whole day in the company of distinguished fellow musicians, writers and scientists to perform, discuss and enjoy the music of this supreme composer whose music lights our lives more than 300 years after his death, is absolutely the best birthday present I could wish for.” 

Bach Marathon