Music Reviews : Marriner Leads Academy in Third Concert

Not so very long ago, the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields was a small string band specializing in Baroque music. Such groups still bear the academy banner, though as generalists rather than specialists.

The full academy, however, is now more a lean symphony orchestra than a chamber ensemble, and not just in size. That was very apparent Tuesday evening at Ambassador Auditorium, when Neville Marriner led his group in the sololess third of five UK/LA ’88 Festival programs.

Brightest and best of the big, well-scrubbed performances was nothing less than Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony. The Funeral March became an intense, epic tone-poem in its own right, providing a very solid center. Marriner produced a lopsided first movement, skipping the exposition repeat and unduly weighting the coda, but the final movements rejoiced in exuberant sparkle and wit.

Marriner can seem a surprisingly stiff and jerky batoneer, but the academy responded to his ministrations fluently. The playing was well-balanced across a broad dynamic spectrum, impeccably groomed in terms of rhythmic cohesion and uniform articulation, and clean and attractive in sound.

The sunny charms of Mozart’s “Haffner” Symphony were brought well to the fore in Marriner’s endlessly pretty, but less than magical, reading. His players are quite capable of lyrically pliable, eloquent and elegant lines, as demonstrated often in Beethoven, but only infrequently in Mozart. Marriner favored brisk brio at all points, reducing the Andante often to square mechanics.

The program of hum-along favorites began with Rossini’s “L’Italiana in Algeri” Overture. Marriner did not pull the potpourri elements together convincingly, but the unintegrated sections all received characteristic clarity, and affectionate grace.