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If you are a classical music lover you have surely heard of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields.  When KXTR was still an FM radio station in Kansas City, it sometimes seemed that you couldn't go an hour without hearing one of their 500 recordings.  For the uninitiated, the Academy is a chamber orchestra founded 50 years ago by Sir Neville Marriner.  And for 50 years it has maintained a standard of excellence for chamber orchestras that only recently has been equaled by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra.  Its repertoire ranges from the Baroque era to 20th century works.  While it is most often heard as a string chamber orchestra, it does augment its strings occasionally with a complement of winds for larger works.

On Saturday night, Kansas City was treated to the strings only version (with a harpsichord in the Bach concerti).  It was led from the first violin chair by Julia Fischer in the Britten and Walton works and Ms. Fischer was the soloist and director for the Bach concerti.

The size of the Academy on Saturday night was 21 strings; and the sound, rich, thick, yet transparent.  I could always hear the inner voices despite its lush sound.  Along with precision attacks, and balanced sound, even without a conductor, it is easy to see why the Academy is so popular and its reputation well deserved.  Although Ms. Fischer was the director in the Britten and Walton, she did her directing from the chair of the first violinist.  This is such a finely tuned ensemble that they are able to play without a conductor standing in front of them and must instead rely on physical and visual cues from the first violinist and other first chairs.

I particular enjoyed the Britten Variations on a Theme by Frank Bridge.  While I didn't find the theme itself to be particularly memorable, the young Benjamin Britten managed to give us 10 extremely varied variations on the theme showcasing a variety of moods and styles.  From two marches (one a military and one a funeral), to a waltz, to a Baroque dance, to a medieval chant and more, I was delighted with each new variation that Britten gave us.  

I was less thrilled with the Walton Sonata for Strings, but this was not due to the performance.  This work was originally a string quartet and was revised and arranged for string orchestra late in Walton's career.  While at times, a string quartet comprised of the first chair players were the only players, most of the time the full ensemble was employed.  While the piece was well played, I would probably prefer to hear it as a string quartet.  I am a big chamber music fan and rarely like it when works originally written for a small group are re-arranged for larger forces.  I think a lot is lost in the bulking up process.

To end the first half and begin the second half of the program, Julia Fischer was the soloist in the two Bach concerti for solo violin, Concerto for Violin No. 1 in A minor, BWV 1041 and Concerto for Violin No. 2 in E major, BWV 1042 respectively. These works are justifiably considered masterpieces of the violin literature and were the highlights of the evening for me.   

The two current hot trends in Baroque performance are to use as many recreations of the original instruments as possible (and sometimes even using gut for strings instead of steel) and bowing and playing the work as closely as possible to what current scholarship believes to have been the original performance practices of the Baroque period.  Some of this thinking has even extended into Romantic era works.  While this can sometimes lead to very refreshing and exciting performances in the right hands, sometimes it just sounds bizarre to me.  

The Academy and Ms. Fischer used modern strings and employed some bowing techniques believed to be from the Baroque era.  However, unlike the frenetic performances I have sometimes heard from other ensembles, everything on Saturday night from the overall sound to the tempi was moderately chosen.  This allowed the music to breathe and the soloist to show herself off to her best advantage.  Ms. Fischer performed with a sure technique and a sweet pure tone.  There was some particularly lovely phrasing in the slow movements.  But mostly, this was about Bach and not Ms. Fischer.  The Academy and Ms. Fischer let the music speak for itself and it spoke very nicely indeed.

The encore was a brief but delightful last movement from the Mozart Divertimento in F major, K. 138.  

I look forward to hearing Ms. Fischer again when she returns in recital to Kansas City on Saturday April 25 at the Folly sponsored by the Harriman-Jewell series in a program of Mozart, Prokofiev, Beethoven and Martinu.    

REVIEW:
Harriman-Jewell Series
Academy of St. Martin in the Fields with Julia Fischer, violin
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Folly Theater
12th and Central, Downtown Kansas City, MO
www.harriman_jewell.org 

By Lee Goodman

Classical Contributor (Past writer)