NEW YORK (AP) — With John Eliot Gardiner on the podium, Beethoven rocked.

The 69-year-old British conductor brought his Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique and Monteverdi Choir to Carnegie Hall for enthralling, breakneck-paced performances of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and “Missa solemnis (solemn Mass),” part of a tour that ends with performances in Costa Mesa, Calif.