Page 198 - ASMF Marriner 100 Coverage Book

A storming showpiece first heard at the 2022 Proms, fiendishly difficult,
full or bravura as well as poetry, the work has a prominent part for solo
cornet. It was played, faultlessly, by Lewis Barton, 18, from Wigan. He falls
into the prized category of “ridiculously talented”. The NYO then played
Prokofiev’s explosive and demanding Symphony No 5, conducted by Jessica
Cottis. Long accused of being a private school bastion, the NYO now draws
50% of its players from the state scector. That may not reflect national
percentages, but even to get to this point, given the diminution of music
education, has taken hard graft over a decade or more, and cannot be
underestimated.

Conductor Jaime Martin and composer Errollyn Wallen at St Martin-in-the-
Fields. Photograph: Richard Lea-Hair

All last week, celebrations honoured the memory of the visionary
conductor Neville Marriner, to mark the centenary of his birth and the
work of the ensemble he founded, the Academy of St Martin in the Fields.
The concert, given on the birthday itself, last Monday, and broadcast live on
Radio 3, was shared between conductors and directors, players moving
around to share the limelight. The short, spirited Parade by Errollyn
Wallen, a world premiere, was equally democratic. Works by Vaughan
Williams and Handel, and Part I of Haydn’s Creation, played and sung with
irresistible verve by the Academy chorus, Sarah-Jane Brandon, Benjamin
Hulett and Matthew Rose, made you glad to be alive. Mozart’s Symphony
No 25 in G minor, led with massive attack by the Academy’s violinist-
director, Joshua Bell, seemed to express the essence of life itself, in all its
zest, sweat, fury, lyricism, joy. Hard to think the symphony is sometimes