LITTLE ROCK — The Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, one of the world’s best known chamber orchestras, has been touring the world almost since it was founded more than 50 years ago by Sir Neville Marriner.
But up ’til now, only its recordings have been heard in Arkansas. (There was that 2004 concert in Texarkana, but the Perot Theatre is on the Texas side of the border.)
The ensemble, touring the United States with pianist Jonathan Biss, will give two all-Mozart concerts in the Natural State this week:
7:30 p.m. Thursday in Reynolds Performance Hall, University of Central Arkansas, Conway. The program includes the Symphony (Sinfonia) in D major, K. 196/121, “La finta giardiniera”;
Di-vertimento in D major, K.136; and the Piano Concertos No. 12 in A major, K.414, and No. 9 in E-flat major, K.271.
The concert is part of UCA’s Public Appearances series. Tickets are $30-$40 (with discounts for UCA alumni, faculty and staff ), $27-$37 for senior citizens, $10 for students, free for UCA students with I.D. Call (501) 450-3265 or (866) 810-0012 or visit
uca.edu/tickets
.
8 p.m. Friday, Baum Walker Hall, Walton Arts Center, 495 W. Dickson St., Fayetteville. The program will include the Divertimento K.136, the Symphony No. 29 in A major, K.201; and the Piano Concerto No. 12.
Tickets are $39-$55. Call (479) 443-5600 or visit the website,
waltonartscenter.org
.
In each concert, Biss will direct the concerto(s) from the keyboard. Kenneth Sillito, the orchestra’s artistic director and concertmaster, will bein charge of the symphonies. “Not conducting, directing from the violin,” he explains.
Marriner started the orchestra out of a group of leading London musicians in its namesake church near London’s Trafalgar Square in 1959. Although he eventually had to put down his violin and pick up a baton, the ensemble’s tradition is to play without a conductor.
Sillito took over as leader(what the British call the concertmaster, or principal first violin) and artistic director in 1980. (Marriner still returns to guest-conduct; the group just finished a European tour under his baton and has one to Germany scheduled in January.) He is marking his 30th anniversary with the ensemble, but he’s not making a big deal out of it - “I think we’ll just let it slip by quietly,” he says.
About 20 players set out on a U.S. tour that starts Monday in Austin, Texas, and closes Nov. 7 in Richmond, Va., with stops in between in Oklahoma, Georgia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and New York.
“We’re starting off in Texas with more concerts than we’ve ever done before,” Sillito says, and mostly in smaller towns.
“We’re looking forward to coming to new places and enjoying playing to enthusiastic audiences in unusual venues for us.”
Although many listeners will remember the orchestra in connection with WolfgangAmadeus Mozart through its association with the 1984 Oscar-winning movie Amadeus, for which the Academy recorded the music for the soundtrack, “It’s unusual for us to do an all-Mozart program,” Sillito says, “the first time we’ve ever done an all-Mozart program in America.
“I hope that the audiences will appreciate that, because we’ve got a good selection of stuff which is familiar, and perhaps other things that are not so familiar.”
Among the not-so-familiar is the opening work on the Conway program, a sinfonia that comes out of Mozart’s opera La Finta Giardinera (The Pretend Gardener); the piece is not normally listed among Mozart’s catalog of symphonies unless, as theacademy did under Marriner’s direction, you record the composer’s entire orchestral output - what Sillito refers to as the “‘Meter of Mozart,’ a meter-long length of CDs.”
The orchestra is opening some concerts, Sillito says, with a Mozart Cassation inG major, K.63, “that is very nice,” he adds, but probably not familiar, even to Mozart fans.
“We think we know Mozart, but there has to be 30 percent, certainly of orchestral works, that are hardly ever heard,” he says. “Serenades, divertimenti, the list is endless.”
Before the Conway concert, the orchestra will hold an open rehearsal, 6-6:30 p.m. Thursday in Reynolds Performance Hall for UCA students, members of the Conway Symphony Orchestra and members of youth and high school orchestras.
Biss will hold a master class for pianists at 1:40 p.m. Thursday in UCA’s Snow Fine Arts Center Recital Hall. And four orchestra members will hold master classes for violin, cello, oboe and horn players in the Snow Fine Arts Building on Friday morning before setting out for Fayetteville. The master classes are open to the public and admission is free. Call (501) 450-3293.
Style, Pages 57 on 10/24/2010