“What sets this group apart isn’t so much its symbiotic synchronization as its ability to produce perfectly shaped music and, more important, to make it sound spontaneous and not canned.” -Washington Post
The Paramount Theater is honored to present London’s world-renowned Academy of St. Martin in the Field in an all-Mozart program.
Sir Neville Marriner says that the small ensemble he founded in 1958 ‘had no intention of giving any concerts or continuing forever’. Happily, whatever the initial intention, 50 years on the Academy is firmly established as one of the world’s leading chamber orchestras and, according to The Times journalist Richard Morrison, ‘As you travel round the globe, the Academy’s name has an aura possessed by no other British orchestra’.
Formed from a group of leading London musicians and working without a conductor, the Academy gave its first performance in its namesake church on 13th November 1959. Its debut recording just two years later, had ‘…precision, care, consummate musicianship and more sense of style than all other chamber orchestras in Europe put together’ (Denis Stevens).
Demand for the Academy, particularly in the recording studio, soon began to grow as did the size of the orchestra and the repertoire it performed. Eventually Sir Neville was forced to put down his violin and take up the conductor’s baton, but the collegiate spirit and flexibility of the original small, conductor-less ensemble remains an Academy hallmark. Today the Academy performs in combinations ranging from a chamber group to a symphony orchestra.
Known for its superlative performances and award-winning recordings, the Academy maintains a busy high-profile international concert schedule and alongside its performances with Sir Neville Marriner and Kenneth Sillito collaborates with some of today’s most thrilling musicians, including Murray Perahia, Joshua Bell, Julia Fischer, Julian Rachlin, Janine Jansen and Anthony Marwood.
The Academy of St. Martin in the Fields Program:
Inon Barnatan, Piano Soloist and Director
MOZART: Symphony in D major, K. 196/121 (La finta giardiniera)
MOZART: Piano Concerto No. 12 in A major, K. 414
MOZART: Piano Concerto No. 9 in E flat major, K. 271
MOZART: Symphony No. 29 in A major, K. 201
Inon Barnatan
This season, the Academy brings to the Paramount pianist Inon Barnatan, who made his American concerto debut in 2007 with the Houston Symphony, and has performed at Carnegie Hall, Music@Menlo, the Delft, Lanaudière and Verbier Festivals, as well as the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Salla Verdi in Milan, the Royal Festival and Queen Elizabeth Halls in London, the Musikverein in Vienna, the Arts Theatre in Shanghai, and Salle Gaveau in Paris. Barnatan has been highly praised by critics like The Denver Post, who named him, “a significant emerging artist in his own right, displaying seemingly limitless facility, infectious gusto and no shortage of interpretative maturity.”
Inon Barnatan has just completed three seasons as a member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s CMS Two program.
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