The Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields was founded in 1959 — 55 years ago last month. But it wasn’t until legendary conductor Pierre Monteux witnessed a performance of the new chamber ensemble a few years later and suggested that its first violinist reposition himself at the podium that the orchestra came into its own.
Neville Marriner, a graduate of London’s Royal College of Music and the Paris Conservatoire, had previously played with the Philharmonia Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, and the Martin String Quartet, before piloting the Academy towards global tours and over 500 recording sessions. Marriner also launched the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and served as music director of the Minnesota Orchestra and principal conductor of the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra.
Knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1985, Marriner now shares homes in London and Devon with his wife, Molly, and the family of his son, Andrew, principal clarinetist of the LSO. But he’s also traveling globally, as his publicity puts it, “to celebrate his 90th birthday with various concerts and appearances.” He spoke by phone with SFCV prior to a couple of those appearances in Napa, in connection with another milestone date, the 30th anniversary of the Mozart biopic Amadeus, on which Marriner served as musical supervisor.
It’s storming, Sir Neville!
I brought it with me. But this is just a shower, as far as we’re concerned.
By British standards?
Yes! We were expecting our own gale. As I left, Scotland was expected to be blown away. My wife didn’t come with me on this trip. She was not a musician, she was a journalist, she used to work for Vogue. But she’s happy now to be planting trees or bulbs in Devon. We have watery problems too, because we have a river running through the estate.
Has weather threatened your career elsewhere?
In Minneapolis, I used to try to arrange guest conductors to come during December or January, because it’s almost unliveable when winter strikes there.
A couple of decades before Minneapolis, you shared some of those benign summers I grew up with on the coast of Maine, when my mom would take me to Pierre Monteux’s school in Hancock. How did you end up there?
Pierre had told me to get up and conduct properly. I’d been conducting from the concertmaster’s seat. He said, “Neville, why do you have to wave your bow?” It hadn’t occurred to me at all. So he said, “Come to my school!” And that’s how it all happened.
How did you happen to end up at the St. Martin-in-the-Fields Anglican church?
“We were just a group of friends who used to meet to play together, because we were all in symphony orchestras or string quartets, and we wanted a bit of independent music-making.” — Sir Neville Marriner We were just a group of friends who used to meet to play together, because we were all in symphony orchestras or string quartets, and we wanted a bit of independent music-making. We used to come to my house in Kensington and we had no intention to take it seriously. But we needed a keyboard player, and our friend Jack Churchill had a weekend job as organist and chorusmaster at that church. After he’d played with us, he said, “Why don’t we give a concert? It would be good in the church, there’s always a few people left over from the sermon.”
So we gave a couple of concerts, but we didn’t know what to call ourselves. It was the vicar who said, “In the 17th and 18th centuries, in this part of London, there was the Academy of Medicine, and the Academy of Literature. Why don’t you call yourselves an academy? But you ought to mention the church, since you’re using our premises.” Later we made a record, and we were stuck with the name.
The church was named for St. Martin of Tours, which had nothing to do with the requirements of your ensemble’s burgeoning career. But what about the fields?
It was the church attached to the Royal Palace, and between Buckingham and the church, there was just open country, when it was first founded in the 18th century.
The ensemble’s name has a rather Baroque feel to it.
But I didn’t want to get stuck with the same repertoire forever. With the help of the record companies, we went from Handel and Bach on to Haydn and Mozart, then Beethoven and Schubert and Brahms, and gradually we got ourselves into the 20th century.
You’ve showcased English composers.
But there’s a big gap between Purcell and Elgar. The 20th century was quite generous to us, but concert promoters in foreign parts are a little bit nervous about introducing English music.
You’ve made several recordings of Benjamin Britten: Did you get to meet him? He’s one of my personal favorites.
He should stay that way, because Ben wrote enormously efficiently for every instrument. I met him many, many times! He was a meticulous conductor, not showy in any way, but highly demanding. And his reputation of being a sensitive item is absolutely right. You had to be very careful: He was very thin-skinned about his personal relationships and his professional life.
You’ve moved to conduct in a variety of different countries and regions. Any characteristic differences between the orchestras in those places?
Americans are very well-paid and they don’t work particularly long hours. Something like the London Symphony, where my son is, works maybe 40 or 50 hours most weeks, either traveling or concertizing in London. My old orchestra in Minneapolis ended up doing 22 hours, which seems luxurious, particularly with the sort of salaries they demand.
German orchestras have quite rigid regimes as far as rehearsal and the amount of time you demand from them, but they are immensely efficient. Yet they don’t sound efficient, they have more vitality than that. America still has some outstanding orchestras, like Cleveland, which is a model, the way they have maintained their style and quality. Even though George Szell has been dead for many years, they sound as if he were still alive.
Was your knighting a sign of recognition of the value of your music-making to your native country?
It was the time when Mrs. Thatcher was our prime minister, and I think anything that was internationally successful seemed to catch her attention. [Nominations are submitted to the Crown through the prime minister.] She had the last word about who gets what. Her politics aside, I can’t help feeling some admiration for her.
Did the Queen touch you with a sword?
She did, but it wasn’t very painful. And you are given a rehearsal — five minutes before.
And did you get to chat with Her Majesty?
Not very much about music. I’ve had lunch once or twice with her since then, and you tend to talk about the world of music, along with the sporting records of the country and the latest horse racing. She is an admirable woman in giving the impression that she’s interested in you and what you do. But really, she needs someone at her side all the time to just prompt her about whom she’s talking to.“[Amadeus] was put together in a waiting room at the airport in New York: We were all traveling in different directions, and that was the only place we could meet: Peter Shaffer, Miloš Forman, Saul Zaentz, and I.” - Sir Neville Marriner
Was it difficult to take on the role of music supervisor for Amadeus?
That was fun! It was put together in a waiting room at the airport in New York: We were all traveling in different directions, and that was the only place we could meet: Peter Shaffer [screenplay], Miloš Forman [director], Saul Zaentz [producer], and I. They promised I could play the orchestra the way I wanted it, and we could do it not in Hollywood.
Then all three of them came to stay with me down in Devon and we had a fairly hilarious weekend, deciding what music we needed. Then they went away, and I recorded all the music, at Abbey Road. And then Miloš took the finished tapes to Prague and shot the film around the music there. Which, for me, was very satisfactory because we were spared the agony of adding the music to the film later. Stylistically, the orchestra was near enough to the performing standards of [Mozart’s] period to make it all acceptable for the musical fraternity.
And you’ll be celebrating the movie with your two separate appearances in Napa, the first sharing “the exclusive back story” on Saturday evening, prior to a screening of the film, and the second a concert of music from the film on Sunday afternoon, Dec. 14.
I thought I was just coming to give a concert, it comes as rather a shock. The one thing in the concert but not in the film was the Violin Concerto [No. 5, the “Turkish”]. But [violinist] Dmitry Sitkovetsky is a regular feature of musical life in the Napa Valley, and they couldn’t leave him out.
He seems to be following in your footsteps, from the concertmaster’s chair to the conductor’s podium, at the Festival del Sole and elsewhere.
I’m going to be seeing him in ten minutes, I’ll have to pull his leg about that.
Do you feel like all this is part of the landmark birthday you’ve been celebrating since April?
You celebrate the fact that you’re still alive. People keep asking, “Are you gonna give a farewell concert?”, which sounds like they wanted to get rid of you pretty soon. I’m able to say that every concert I do nowadays could be my farewell concert.
Does your venerability slow you down at all?
I think one fares much better than if one were playing an instrument. I couldn’t have played a violin decently for the last 20 years; I would not be the sort of violin player whom I would wish to employ in my orchestra. But being a conductor: If you can keep your mind pretty alert, and you can still remember your scores, physically-speaking you don’t have to be what Monteux used to call “choreographabatic,” — you don’t have to chuck yourself around the podium to affect the orchestra. Whatever you do at the performance is just a reminder of what you’ve been doing in rehearsal, so you don’t need to be too frenetic. But I do find it quite a slow process to learn new works now. Is it really worth it? Sometimes it is. And traveling becomes quite a pain in the neck.
Well, your vitality certainly makes my job easier, Sir Neville.