Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s Bach Canatata Pilgrimage is now available as a complete box set. Released by Soli Deo Gloria and featuring a whopping 56 CDs in total, the collection marks the first time the complete live Pilgrimage recordings have been issued together on a single label.

Featuring the Monteverdi Choir, English Baroque Soloists and solo singers Magdalena Kožená, Paul Agnew, Mark Padmore, Sara Mingardo, James Gilchrist and Peter Harvey, the collection includes 28 existing volumes from the SDG cantata series, plus four additional CDs previously released by Deutsche Grammophon. Completing the box-set is a data CD containing an index of the cantatas, sung texts with English translations and original sleeve notes. Priced at £166.60 on Amazon, only 3000 sets have been made available worldwide.

Gardiner’s Bach Cantata Pilgrimage took place in 2000, when his Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists set out to perform all of Bach’s surviving church cantatas over the course of the year – marking the 250th anniversary of the composer’s death.

The conductor celebrated his 70th birthday in April this year and to honour the occasion Gramophone produced a free digital magazine gathering together the reviews of 70 of his recordings.

Gardiner and his Monteverdi Choir also received the 2013 Baroque Vocal Gramophone Classical Music Award for their recording of Bach Motets on SDG (SDG SDG716); Gardiner remains the musician to have received the most Gramophone Awards during his long recording career.