Page 192 - ASMF Marriner 100 Coverage Book
P. 192
19 April 2024
A moving, magical tribute to the great Sir Neville
Marriner, plus the best of April’s classical and
jazz concerts
On pin-sharp form, the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields did their late founder proud with this
scintillating evening of music old and new
Ivan Hewett19 April 2024 • 12:59pm
Marriner 100 at the Royal Festival Hall CREDIT: Leahairphotography
Marriner 100, Royal Festival Hall ★★★★☆
The most successful British classical musician of the past 60 years isn’t Simon Rattle, or Emma
Kirkby or Dame Janet Baker. It’s a dapper, smiling violinist-turned-conductor, born into a
working-class family, who created the world’s most-recorded and most-broadcast orchestra: the
Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Neville Marriner didn’t quite make it to his 2024 centenary –
he died in 2016 at the age of 92 – but the orchestra he founded wasn’t going to let the occasion
pass without a big splash. They’ve mounted three celebratory concerts, of which Thursday night’s
at the Festival Hall was the most lavish.
Marriner founded the orchestra as a self-directing group who were all “refugees” from the
conductor’s overmastering hand, and here it stayed true to that founding principle. The evening
launched with four pieces by Mozart from the soundtrack to the 1984 film Amadeus, for which the
