Page 123 - ASMF Marriner 100 Coverage Book

15 April 2024

From the archive: Neville Marriner on his

musical education

15 APRIL 2024

The violinist, chamber music player and conductor was born on this day in 1924. In this excerpt
from a 1986 interview, Neville Marriner speaks to Dennis Rooney about his first encounters with
violin playing and his early teachers

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Marriner’s first encounter with the violin came about
in what he thinks is ‘the most common way of all,
family interest. My father and mother were both
amateur musicians, father in particular. He was
manically dedicated to playing the piano, violin and
singing. Mother only sang. This was our entire home
entertainment, so that having gone to sleep for the
first four or five years of my life with this noise going
on, it seemed completely natural that when it
became possible for me to play an instrument, I
should be given one to play. My father gave me a
violin. It was something he very much wanted to
teach and he was an excellent teacher although he
didn’t play it very well himself. He only had six
lessons in his life, which he was given in exchange for
posing for a portrait that eventually was hung in the
Royal Academy! The artist was a violinist and gave
him the lessons’.

Marriner’s father had no expectations of his son
being a brilliant prodigy. However, recalls Sir Neville,
‘he never deviated from his belief that I would be a
professional musician. He never pushed, but I felt
that he would have been bitterly disappointed if I
had not continued. He got so much pleasure out of

teaching. I think that I wished to do well as much for
his feelings as for anything else. Obviously, when
you emerged as a winner in your local competition
you got a completely wrong idea of your own worth. You were the best young player for fifty miles
around. When I was sent to London to audition for Sir Hugh Allen at the RCM - he was a most
impressive, rather 19th-century gentleman with a goatee and a very stern manner; almost a