Academy of St Martin in the Fields
The Academy of St Martin in the Fields is one of the most famous chamber orchestras specializing in baroque music and Viennese classical music and playing modern instruments. It is named after the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields in London , where it initially appeared.
history
Sir Neville Marriner founded the orchestra in 1958. Initially it was a purely string orchestra made up of members of the great London orchestras who played baroque music in a non-romanticizing way without a conductor during the summer break. Wind players were soon added, and Marriner took on the role of conductor. From the mid-1960s onwards, the market for recordings with baroque music was dominated and a permanent orchestra with permanent members was established. From the mid-1970s, concertmaster Iona Brown and later concertmaster Kenneth Sillito took over the leadership. Since 2000 is Murray Perahia principal guest conductor ( Principal Guest Conductor ), since the 2011/2012 season, the American violinist Joshua Bell musical director.
The supremacy of the orchestra with its modern instruments ended with the emergence of popularity of performance on historical instruments in the early 1980s, although Nikolaus Harnoncourt performed on original instruments as early as the 1950s . The currently 63-member orchestra now also plays romantic and contemporary repertoire with a few additional players. In addition, a choir has existed since 1975 and can be heard regularly on television broadcasts of the UEFA Champions League with a recording of the 1992 Champions League anthem .
The style of the ASMF in baroque music set standards and is easily recognizable in its great vitality and rhythmic pointedness. A synthesis of modern instruments with the sound ideal and the variety that are idiomatic for old works succeeded.
With over 500 recordings, the ASMF is the most recorded chamber orchestra of all. The film scores for Amadeus , The English Patient and Titanic also achieved particularly high editions .
In spring 2020 the orchestra is on tour in Europe with Fazıl Say .
literature
- Christian Tyler: Making Music: Neville Marriner and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields. Self-published by ASMF, distributed via their website.
Web links
- Works by and about Academy of St Martin in the Fields in the catalog of the German National Library
- Homepage