Music Reviews : Academy Soloists Shine in Fourth Concert

For the fourth of its five concerts at Ambassador Auditorium, the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields under Sir Neville Marriner presented a cannily balanced program that also served to display the skills of individual members of the ensemble.

Tippett’s 1953 Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli remains perhaps the most searing of that fine series of British neo-Baroque works stretching from Elgar to Peter Maxwell Davies. It was led on this occasion with a heady mixture of clenched-fist intensity and lyrical breadth. The violin duo of Christopher Warren-Green and Jonathan Rees provided the requisite fire for the concertino solos.

The Academy winds dominated Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante in E-flat, K. 297b, music which can sound somewhat precious when led with the languidity its hyperelegant measures invite.

No such problem here. Marriner maintained mobility of line and compact sonority without inhibiting the lyrical inclinations of his superbly accomplished solo quartet: oboist Celia Nicklin, clarinetist Andrew Marriner, oboist Graham Sheen and hornist Timothy Brown.

Marriner reaffirmed his right to be called a father of the authentic-performance movement--his announced disdain for the sound of period instruments notwithstanding--with a model, modern interpretation of Haydn’s “Miracle” Symphony, No. 96: quick-witted, rhythmically ordered, with optimal linear clarity, and such sophisticated touches as the timpani’s zestful underpinnings (executed by Tristan Fry), piercing and buoying the orchestral fabric with a sound more like that of rifle shots than the usual and quite inappropriate rolling thunder.

Notably present too was Haydn’s spirited humor, culminating in Nicklin’s scrumptiously lilting oboe solo in the minuet.

The single encore: the andante of Mendelssohn’s “Reformation” Symphony, played with noble calm.