… a properly brilliant musician. I don’t normally do the obits stuff (notwithstanding Bowiegate), but I do feel the blog should record the passing of this legendary batonmeister. Any time you see the Marriner/ASMF imprimatur you know it’s gonna be quality. Here’s some English string music by way of illustration.
https://youtu.be/Gzp3rPTLwLA
Mike_H says
Colin H says
Wonderful, Moose – to be heard from beginning to end.
I never knew what Neville looked like till I searched online today. It was a name that appeared to be on albums – often cheap, unshowy baroque collections, from recordings made years ago, but always sumptuously played and produced – forever. I had no idea he was still with us.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5spGdMOKHM4
Moose the Mooche says
He looked very like Lucian Freud, non?
Colin H says
Indeed. Especially in a 1975 BBC interview clip on YouTube – with a man who looks very like Alan Titchmarsh.
bungliemutt says
Couldn’t agree more with the OP. It is through Sir Neville Marriner and the Academy of St Martin in the Field that I discovered classical music. I have dozens of CDs of their recordings and they are still amongst the very best, never bettered. The ASMF recording of Vaughan Williams’ Variation on a Theme of Thomas Tallis is the superlative version of this already fabulous piece of music, which never fails to bring a tear to my eye. Raising a glass tonight to Sir Neville.
Colin H says
I’m currently two hours into his performance of Bach’s ‘Art of Fugue’ (while scanning various pages from 1960s jazz mags). Tallis shall be next.
bungliemutt says
This is going to cost me a fortune! I’d recommend the ASMF version of Handel’s Concerti Grossi 3 & 6 as well. Fantastic.
mikethep says
That disc also includes the best performance of The Lark Ascending, with Iona Brown.
Gatz says
How will Classic FM cope? The phrase ‘performed by the Acaedmy of St Martin in the Fields, conducted by Sir Neville Mariner’ is repeated even more often than those ads for dental implants (though considerably more welcome). Good job he has a sizeable back catalogue to keep them going.
Blue Boy says
One of the true greats of British classical music, not taking the route of becoming a principal conductor at one of the big orchestras, but creating his own orchestra who went on to record many defining recordings of the classical greats, and established a worldwide reputation. A great man who was still working into his 90s. RIP
Davidg says
About 36 years ago, when the great man was about as old I am now, one of my friends referred to The Academy of Sir Neville in the Marriner and that is how I have thought of them ever since. Even when they were led/conducted by Iona Brown and earlier this year when I saw them with the great Joshua Bell, they were still Sir Neville’s band.
Looking through my Marriner recordings a couple of hours ago, I discovered just how many I had, from Vivaldi and Mozart, via Rossini, to Walton and Tippett. They include my favourite Four Seasons (with Alan Loveday) and my favourite Mozart Piano concerto (20 with Alfred Brendel).
At 15, he played violin in the London Symphony Orchestra when many of the musicians had been called up at the beginning of the war. Five years later he was invalided out of the Navy with a Kidney infection. Many years later he confided to Norman Lebrecht that the infection was shrapnel received on the Normandy beaches before D-day (he was on the recce team).
Apparently, he conducted for the final time last Thursday in Italy, just to help out a friend. He was 92. Wow.