From the archives

‘The Academy made records and records made the Academy.’ Lady Marriner’s pithy observation on the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, the institution she ran for her husband Sir Neville Marriner, is(). Its first concert, ‘A Survey of the Baroque Concerto’, was given in November 1959 at the landmark church in Trafalgar Square, with repertoire they took into their first recording sessions in 1961: Albinoni, Torelli, Corelli and Locatelli – ‘the Italian ice cream merchants’ as Neville Marriner fondly referred to them. Those first L’Oiseau Lyre recordings reveal the essence of the Academy sound: a dozen top string players led from the violin by Marriner, who wanted energy with lightness and transparency, precision plus the instinctive flexibility of chamber musicians. Marriner loved recording, thriving in the industry’s three-hour session format in an increasingly wide range of repertoire as the ASMF’s relationship with the Argo label took off from the mid-’60s. Their best-selling Vivaldi with soloist Alan Loveday still sounds fresh, even alongside Iona Brown’s ASMF recording a decade later; the early ’80s Handel are surprisingly stylish, though by now period instrument specialists were taking over Baroque repertoire.