Conductor
Born: April 15, 1924;
Died: October 2, 2016
SIR Neville Marriner, who has died aged 92, was a renowned conductor who founded the Academy of St Martin in the Fields in 1958 – one of the world’s most famous chamber orchestras. It rapidly gained an international reputation and under Sir Neville recorded widely. His total musicianship ensured the orchestra was particularly recognised for its genuine interpretation of early and baroque music set at the original pitch and tempi.
Musicians loved to play for Sir Neville – he was a fine violinist before becoming a conductor – and had the knack of exactly knowing how and when to drive an orchestra to fresh heights. I once heard him at a rehearsal tapping the baton on his music stand and courteously saying to the orchestra, “I think we can do better than that and then we can repair for our tea and buns.”
Sir Neville and The Academy came to several Edinburgh Festivals - notably in 1970 for two concerts, the second of which was an all Bach programme with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and the Scottish Choral Society; an emotional account of Richard Strauss’s Metamorphosen in 1984; and in 1986 an all Mozart concert with the Stirling born soprano Margaret Marshall.
He conducted one fondly memorable concert in Glasgow and Edinburgh with the Scottish National Orchestra. In 1994 Sir Neville was in charge of a fine account of Haydn’s The Creation with an impressive line-up of soloists, Amanda Roocroft, John Mark Ainsley and Michael George.
Neville Marriner was born in Lincoln, the son of a carpenter and at 16 won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music to study violin. He joined the Royal Navy in 1943 and was wounded while on commando raids reconnoitring the Normandy coast pre-D-Day - during his convalescence he studied early music. After completing his studies at the RCM he spent a year in Paris studying under the legendary conductor Pierre Monteux.
He taught at Eton College for a year and in 1948 he was appointed a professor at the RCM and continued to play violin with ensembles. In 1956 he was appointed principal second violin with the London Symphony Orchestra, a position he held until 1969.
He and friends for two years used to meet to play music for fun in his Kensington flat. “That period gave us time to think about the sound we wanted,” Sir Neville recalled years later. “It’s the sound that made the Academy celebrated around the world. We wanted clarity in the texture and vitality in the tempi.”
In 1957 the vicar at St Martin-in-the-Fields, in London's Trafalgar Square, asked Sir Neville to perform music after evensong. The orchestra soon got a recording contract and expanded from 13 to 20 players.
Sir Neville’s conducting became recognised around the world and in 1969 he was appointed musical director of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra while also being invited to conduct many international orchestras – including the Northern Sinfonia, based in Newcastle.
But Sir Neville’s s name will forever be associated with the Academy - he served as its music director from 1958 until 2011 and held the title of life president until his death. Many of their recordings are now classics. They range from Handel's Messiah, Bach’s Brandenburg Concerti, Britten and the complete Schubert and Mozart symphonies. Sir Neville and the Academy were the most recorded chamber orchestra in the world – and to all those recordings Sir Neville brought a vivacity, love and grace.
But what brought him classical stardom was his conducting for Milos Forman’s movie of Amadeus in 1984. A star-studded cast and Sir Neville’s refined realisation of the glorious music was widely praised. He insisted that all the music be genuine Mozart with no “Hollywood embellishments”. In fact the commission was a God-send for the Academy. The disc sold worldwide and the royalties filled the orchestra’s coffers. The Academy never received any Arts Council grant.
He was knighted in 1985 and made a Companion of Honour in 2015. Sir Neville was a highly competitive tennis player and a keen gardener at his cottage in Devon.
He was very much a musician’s musician: his understanding of a score was detailed and intense. He once said, “When you’re a conductor, you exploit a lot of very talented musicians. They’re in front of you and you’re taking from them the best that they can offer. So the potential for having a really satisfactory musical experience is greater.”
In 1949 Sir Neville married Diana Carbutt. The marriage was dissolved and in 1957 he married Molly Sims who survives him with a son and daughter from his first marriage.
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