In Stuttgart, 1983 - 1989, Neville Marriner followed Sergiu Celibidache, offering quite the contrast to that willfully prodigious Romanian broodingly charismatic style with his own easygoing, less spectacular but genial manner of music making. His sound wasn’t as dense and carefully crafted, but the ensemble’s playing became lighter and more flexible, agile rather than probing. It is in his Stuttgart period that Marriner increasingly focused on repertoire that went beyond the baroque and classical periods. This compilation offers repertoire which music lovers will be less likely to associate with Marriner: German romanticism, including all of Schumann’s Symphonies, Richard Strauss, Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff, Mahler, Bartók and Gershwin – The fundamental impression that comes from re-listening to these performances, apart from good and fresh music-making, is one of sympathetic music-making. That feels about right as an epitaph for the man and his body of work.

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REVIEW:

A highlight here is a fine digital set of Tchaikovsky’s four orchestral suites, performances that combine geniality, deft playing and, in the finales of the Third and Fourth Suites, a fair helping of the bravura excitement. Bartók’s Miraculous Mandarin Suite has plenty of drive and if the finale of Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta sounds a little muddled in places, impressive accounts of Britten’s Sinfonia da Requiem and Honegger’s Third Symphony more than make amends. Mahler’s Fourth and Rachmaninov’s Second Symphonies share a certain transparency, a quality that also informs Marriner’s admirable performances of the Schumann symphonies. Also included is music by Beethoven, Richard Strauss, Copland and Gershwin, and rather cheesily put-together compendia of West Side Story and Porgy and Bess ‘melodies’. All the same, the set can be enthusiastically recommended and the sound is excellent throughout.

– Gramophone

Best-selling American violinist Rachel Barton Pine, whose previous release went straight to #1 on the Billboard Traditional Classical Chart, debuts on AVIE with a survey of Mozart’s complete Violin Concertos and the Sinfonia Concertante, in which she introduces the extraordinarily talented young violist Matthew Lipman. Her orchestra is none other than the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields conducted by their legendary founder, Sir Neville Marriner.

Capriccio Encore is a series of re-releases of the most famous recordings from Capriccio’s back catalogue, fully re-mastered and competitively priced. The legendary recordings of artists such as Sandor Végh, Ton Koopman, Sir Neville Marriner and the Vienna Boys’ Choir also contain repertoire highlights that have a particularly special appeal, from the baroque to the present day. This installment in the series features Sir Neville Marriner conducting his Academy of St. Martin In the Fields as they perform ballet suites written by French Romantic composer Jules Emile Frederic Massenet. Massenet was a skilled orchestrator, and willingly wrote ballet episodes for his numerous operas as well as one stand-along ballet. His style with its graceful movement was perfectly suited to classical French ballet.

Classical Music

SIR NEVILLE MARRINER and ACADEMY OF ST MARTIN-IN-THE-FIELDS

George Friedrich Handel:
Solomon, HWV 67: Arrival of the Queen of Sheba
Concerto Grosso in A major, Op. 6, No. 11, HWV 329

Ludwig van Beethoven: Grosse Fuge in B flat major, Op. 133 (arr. N. Marriner)

Felix Mendelssohn: Symphony No. 4 in A major, Op. 90, “Italian”

Benjamin Britten: Les illuminations, Op. 18*

*Anthony Rolfe-Johnson, tenor
Academy of St Martin in the Fields
Neville Marriner, conductor

Recorded from St John’s, Smith Square, London, 23–24 May 1974 (Handel), Royal Albert Hall, London (BBC Proms Concerts), 25 August 1975 (Beethoven), and 12 August 1983 (Mendelssohn, Britten)

Picture format: NTSC 4:3
Sound format: Enhanced Mono
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Menu language: English
Booklet notes: English, French, German
Running time: 86 mins
No. of DVDs: 1

R E V I E W:

SIR NEVILLE MARRINER, ACADEMY OF ST MARTIN IN THE FIELDS • Neville Marriner, cond; Acad of St. Martin in the Fields • ICA ICAD 5064 (DVD: 86:00) Live: London 1974, 1975, 1983

HANDEL Arrival of the Queen of Sheba. Concerto Grosso in A, op. 6/11. BEETHOVEN Grosse Fuge. MENDELSSOHN Symphony 4, “Italian.” BRITTEN Les Illuminations

I suppose most of us have by now become inured to the idea that “chamber” means one-to-a-part, especially in Baroque music, but even the music of later periods has been on a diet in recent years. It’s certainly cheaper that way, regardless of the accuracy of the assumption that this is somehow more “authenticke” than a more generous approach. Neville Marriner never felt it necessary to get on that bandwagon, even as he absorbed some of its performance discoveries, such as crisp articulation and fleeter speeds. This DVD, covering a decade of the ASMF’s 50-year career, shows how it was done.

Through its first dozen or so years, Marriner led from the first violinist’s chair, and we can see what happens in the two Handel pieces from 1974. The intensity of the concentration of all the players and the simple, even discreet, nods from Marriner that set them going are a lesson not in control but in collective expression. Handel’s Sheba was a favorite of Thomas Beecham, albeit heavily tarted up in full orchestral array. Marriner and the Academy take it as it is, and use their modern instruments with an awareness of what Handel might have heard without imaging that they are reproducing it. The queen’s arrival is joyful rather than stately. This is also true of the concerto grosso. The string playing is lean, but not timid. These two pieces were recorded by the BBC in the then-recently renovated St. John’s, Smith Square, and the space and the music are well captured. The passing autos and the evident passing time of day lend a quotidian flavor to the enterprise.

For some reason, Marriner thought it a good idea to realize Beethoven’s quartet movement, the Grosse Fuge , as a piece for small string orchestra. This performance, from a BBC Proms concert in 1975, does not make a strong case either for the band or the arrangement. It is, frankly, leaden and a bit sour.

This disappointment is wonderfully redeemed, however, in the following performance of Mendelssohn’s Fourth Symphony, in a Proms recording from 1983. Here, the lightness of touch we could hear 10 years earlier in the Handel comes alive again in Mendelssohn’s most buoyant music. This is, simply, a fine, well-balanced, even elegant, performance and is a pleasure to hear.

The same concert presented Britten’s orchestral song cycle Les Illuminations , sung by a clarion Anthony Rolfe Johnson. Singer, conductor, and orchestra are at one here in this gripping exploration of Arthur Rimbaud’s poetic world. But for one small niggle, this would go to the top of my list of performances of this piece, Britten and Pears notwithstanding. The niggle is the BBC’s sound, which favors the singer and puts the orchestra into a slightly hollow and opaque background. Why the group did not go into a studio the next day to record it properly is a mystery, but I am glad to have this version. As far as I can tell, this is the late Anthony Rolfe Johnson’s only recording of this piece, alas. Apart from the Beethoven, then, this all makes a fine program.

FANFARE: Alan Swanson

This selection is a Hybrid Multichannel Super Audio CD. The Stereo Hybrid SACD program can be played on any standard compact disc player. The DSD Surround programs require an SACD player for playback.

These excellent performances date from 1970, before Neville Marriner embarked on possibly the dullest complete Beethoven symphony cycle in history, and they have all of the qualities of elegance and verve that made the conductor and his Academy of St. Martin in the Fields the greatest chamber orchestra of the 1960s and '70s. There's simply nothing to quibble with from a musical standpoint: the allegros move along smartly, wind parts are clearly audible (particularly in the Second Symphony), and trumpets and drums cut through the texture without blasting. The two slow movements sing and the strings play beautifully. Of course, period groups have made Marriner's approach sound a bit tame in comparison, but whatever the performances lack in rawness and edge they more than make up for in polish. It's a perfectly legitimate view of the music, and one that has aged not a bit.


Sonically, these multichannel remasterings convey an excellent sense of the orchestra in a warm acoustic space, without emphasizing the rear channels to distracting effect. Unfortunately, there is a huge amount of ambient noise (in other words, hiss) that comes as quite a surprise given the silent backgrounds that we have become used to in this digital (or even Dolby) age. Whether or not this will bother you is very much a matter of personal preference, but be warned: audiophile sound this certainly is not. However, the musical values remain first rate and certainly justify making this pair of performances available again.
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

This album is a re-mastered, re-release of Sir Neville Marriner leading the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. Legendary recordings of artists like Sandor Vegh, Ton Koopman and the Vienna Boys' Choir are all included as special repertoire highlights from the baroque to the contemporary era.

GRAMMY� Award winning Yarlung Records celebrates it's 10th Anniversary and continues to bring fresh musicians to the classical music world using minimalist audiophile recording techniques to deliver sound as close to living performance as possible, engineering these albums in concert halls famous for their acoustics such as Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. Yarlung uses analog tape and high resolution digital media for CDs made with special alloys, high resolution digital downloads, and 180 Gram vinyl LPs, mastered by Steve Hoffman and Bernie Grundman. The label's philosophy is to present the music like a clean window, which does not distract from the beautiful "view" on the other side. Among it's greatest successes featured on this compilation was Antonio Lysy at The Broad: Music from Argentina, which won the label's first GRAMMY Award and was ranked in The Absolute Sound as one of the 40 Best recordings of all time.

Classical Music

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

Martin Chalifour is Principal Concertmaster of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and is a professor at the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music. Chalifour is a frequent guest at several summer music festivals. Maintaining close ties with his native Quebec, he has returned there often to teach and perform as soloist with various Canadian orchestras.

Includes work(s) by various composers.