Exploring Nuances in Strings

The Academy of St. Martin in the Fields offered us the chance to compare Mozart’s and Bartok’s ideas about divertimentos and Purcell’s and Britten’s thoughts on variation writing, in a rewarding and characteristic program from its touring string band Sunday afternoon at the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

The most fascinating cross-reference, however, was between the Bartok and Britten works, written at virtually the same time.

The anxieties of impending war were closer, geopolitically as well as chronologically, to Bartok’s 1939 Divertimento than to Britten’s 1937 “Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge,” so the great differences of character and mood are not surprising. But in the play of texture and sonority, these utterly original works are strikingly similar, particularly under the rich Academy sheen.

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Now celebrating its 40th anniversary, the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields has become a major musical industry, sending forth ensembles from eight to 80 players on regular tours, under the artistic triumvirate of founder Neville Marriner, Iona Brown and Kenneth Sillito. The string contingent here was led from the concertmaster’s chair by Sillito, replacing the originally scheduled Brown, who bowed out because of illness.

The substitution probably changed little in the well-drilled performances, although it did bring us the Bartok as an agenda revision. In any size and configuration, the Academy produces technically assured playing of great elan, here remarkable for depth and resonance, from the thrum of unison pizzicatos to shimmering clouds of harmonics.

Affection and character have not been practiced out of these performances, purposefully propulsive yet alert to nuance and spirit. The great, conflicted central Adagio of the Bartok, the emotional wild card in this lineup, emerged in slow, roiling tides of concentrated energy struggling against anger and despair.

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The blithe Divertimento in D, K. 136, by the young Mozart certainly provided a contextual foil for the Bartok. The Academy plays this sort of thing with more knowing grace than most other modern-instrument groups--quick, clean and sincerely felt.

The Academy pioneered the revival of Baroque orchestral music but has largely ignored its more recent period-instrument manifestations. A suavely sculpted but coldly mechanical account of Purcell’s G-minor Chaconne made the expansive and imaginative piece seem merely an exercise in figuration.

In encore, Sillito and Co. proffered sweet morsels from Dohnanyi, the “Henry V” soundtrack--reminding us of the Academy’s notable film successes, including “Amadeus” and “The English Patient”--and one of Bartok’s Rumanian Dances, with its keening, curling solo played with stylish flair by Sillito.