Booklet 125X125.Indd
1 2 3 CONTENTS A RECORDED HISTORY Philip Stuart 7 REMINISCENCES BY LADY MARRINER 18 A FEW WORDS FROM PLAYERS 21 HISTORY OF THE ACADEMY OF SAINT MARTIN IN THE FIELDS Susie Harries (née Marriner) 36 CD INFORMATION 44 INDEX 154 This Edition P 2020 Decca Music Group Limited Curation: Philip Stuart Project Management: Raymond McGill & Edward Weston Digital mastering: Ben Wiseman (Broadlake Studios) TH 60 ANNIVERSARY EDITION Design & Artwork by Paul Chessell Special thanks to Lady Marriner, Joshua Bell, Marilyn Taylor, Andrew McGee, Graham Sheen, Kenneth Sillito, Naomi Le Fleming, Tristan Fry, Robert Smissen, Lynda Houghton, Tim Brown, Philip Stuart, Susie Harries, Alan Watt, Ellie Dragonetti, Gary Pietronave (EMI Archive, Hayes) 4 5 A RECORDED HISTORY Philip Stuart It all started with L’Oiseau-Lyre - a boutique record label run by a Paris-based Australian heiress who paid the players in cash at the end of the session. The debut LP of Italianate concerti grossi had a monochrome photograph of a church porch on the cover and the modest title “A Recital”. Humble beginnings indeed, but in 1962 “The Gramophone” devoted a full page to an enthusiastic review, concluding that it was played “with more sense of style than all the chamber orchestras in Europe put together”. Even so, it was more than a year before the sequel, “A Second Recital”, appeared. Two more such concert programmes ensued [all four are on CDs 1-2] but by then the Academy had been taken up by another label with a shift in policy more attuned to record collectors than to concert goers.
[Show full text]