Continuing his award-winning cycle, Sir John Eliot Gardiner leads the London Symphony Orchestra, his Monteverdi Choir and three talented, young, actors from the Guildhall School in a landmark performance of Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which was performed as part of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death.

To mark the celebrations, Gardiner produced a special version of the work featuring some cuts to the original movements that, in his words, ‘removing all of the music relating to the Mechanicals and thus focusing on the world of the fairies and the human lovers.’ Mendelssohn, who adored Shakespeare’s writings, composed his concert overture based on A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 1827 at the young age of 17. Music scholar George Grove described it as ‘the greatest marvel of early maturity that the world has ever seen in music”

The album’s Pure Audio Blu-ray disc includes bonus footage of the concert performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Mendelssohn’s Symphony No 1, alongside high resolution master audio.