Page 127 - ASMF Marriner 100 Coverage Book

fundamental legacy that Eminence reissues in a 14-CD box set whose vitality has not aged a
bit.

The recipe was then applied to Bach and Vivaldi and soon to Mozart, whose complete
symphonies and piano concertos Marriner recorded for Philips (with Alfred Brendel!). He
then began a strong conducting career, holding tenured positions at the Minnesota Symphony
and the SWR in Stuttgart. Having moved to EMI, he offered this publisher an impressive
corpus of 80 CDs which culminated in recordings of choral works, particularly by Haydn
(masses and Die Schöpfung). It was in a memorable War Requiem by Britten that Brussels
heard him for the last time.

A prodigious sense of balance

Marriner really founded the prototype of the modern chamber orchestra, with a staff of about
forty musicians, which is sometimes called the Mozart orchestra because it is so naturally
suited to the music of the classical period, but he did not hesitate to develop it upstream
towards romantic or contemporary repertoires of which the Warner box set gives us many
tasty testimonies. Because there is always an indescribable pleasure in playing in Marriner's
work, which illuminates the scores from within, without hiding anything from us about their
succulent pleasures.

Although he has passed on the direction of other musicians (starting with Iona Brown),
Marriner has nevertheless remained loyal to his Academy, of which he became "president for
life" in 2011. His clarity, suppleness and vivacity can be found in repertoires where we did
not expect him: a scintillating Bizet (the symphony and incidental music of L'Arlésienne), a
sincerely lyrical Peer Gynt, a lively Tricorne de Falla. A remarkable accompanist, he has
made marvellous recordings of concertos with the trumpets of Maurice André or Guy
Trouvon, the horn of Barry Tuckwell (Mozarts to die for) and always with the Salzburger six
memorable piano concertos with the great Christian Zacharias as part of his first complete
work. Still Mozart, with symphonies n° 24 to 41, opera overtures that already tell a story but
also rarities such as the ballet Les Petits Riens.

The Beethoven box set (Decca) is typical of this middle approach: clear but eloquent, the
symphonies benefit from interpretations of the golden mean in a constant gradation
throughout the works, whereas, by dint of sounding modern at all costs, other conductors,
such as Nézet-Séguin, have recently shown a hiatus between light pages and heroic pieces.
Decca also offers us two versions of Beethoven's violin concerto, the first very fluid with
Iona Brown, its leader at the Academy; the second, revolutionary, includes, at the request of a
surprising Kremer, Schnittke's cadenzas with timpani! But next to it, Marriner gives us a
bouquet of dances by the same Beethoven. Let's keep it light!

The art of being in a situation but never going too

far

In all his interpretations, Marriner favours tact and good taste, at the risk of sometimes
seeming insufficiently involved in the panacheous works of late Romanticism and early
twentieth century century. In the Baroque world, this restraint was shaken up by an appetite
e
to hit the nail on the head that almost created a style in itself. Witness his vision of one of his