2024-09-05 14:20:37
Church of St. Martina in the fields does not stand in the middle of the ropes, on the contrary, it faces the biggest bustle of London – it is situated in Trafalgar Square, not far from the National Gallery there. The simple building, reminiscent of an antique temple with a pointed tower, was designed by James Gibbs in 1722 and was copied by builders from all over the Anglophone world. It became a kind of prototype of Protestant church architecture.
Not only the distinctive portico with massive Corinthian columns from St. Martin in the Fields made perhaps the most famous English church. Following the example of Martin of Tours, to whom it is dedicated, it has become an institution that cares for homeless locals and young people with problematic backgrounds. And it is also known for its music, which has a prominent place here.
Saint Martin in the Fields hosts several ensembles whose renown goes far beyond the British Isles. Jazz concerts are played in the crypt, and three famous ensembles founded by the conductor John Eliot Gardiner have a background here, i.e. the Monteverdi Choir, the English Baroque Soloists and the Orchester Révolutionnaire et Romantique. Above all, the orchestra of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, who will come to this year’s Dvořák Prague Festival. It starts next week, the British will perform on September 21.
The ensemble was founded in 1959 by the violinist Neville Marriner, whose 100th anniversary of birth the ensemble commemorated magnificently this year. Originally a twelve-member ensemble, it grew into a chamber orchestra, in whose ranks the best British musicians gradually took their seats.
While Marriner’s colleagues at the time explored the possibilities of old instruments and historically informed interpretations, the Englishman offered a fresh presentation of baroque and classicist pieces on modern instruments. With Marriner at the head, and in more recent times also with other prominent personalities, the group made hundreds of sound images that immediately became a reference. Among other things, he recorded the soundtrack for the film Amadeus directed by Miloš Forman, which sold more than six million copies.
An experiment in the subway
At the upcoming Prague concert in the Rudolfinum, the Academy of St. Martin in the fields of the American violinist Joshua Bell. He filmed with them for the first time as a twenty-one-year-old in 1988, and it was this collaboration that helped him launch an unprecedented international career.
Violinist Joshua Bell (foreground) with the Academy of St. Martin in the fields. | Photo: Benjamin Ealovega
Bell was eventually chosen by founder Marriner as his successor when he handed him the title of music director in 2011. Since then, the American has already extended his contract twice, he will remain at the head of the body until at least 2028.
“Our orchestra is used to operating without a conductor, but with Joshua, whom we consider one of us, we have found a recipe that results in concerts of unprecedented vitality and virtuosity,” said clarinetist Tom Lessels. “He demands from us the same level of concentration and commitment that characterizes his own playing, and without exception we leave the stage with the feeling that we have given the performance of our lives. Thanks to this, listeners and players alike get the impression that they are hearing familiar music anew, as if for the first time.” he added.
Fifty-six-year-old Bell is a musician whose unquestionable reputation allows him to venture into areas where a “classical” musician rarely strays. His first soundtrack for the film Bloody Violin already won an Oscar. It wasn’t a bad start, but “film music is about two percent of my activities,” Bell admits.
The aura of a native of the state of Indiana is completed by several charming stories. One even won a Pulitzer Prize when the violinist arranged with the editors of the Washington Post to stand in a Washington subway station in January 2007 to play Bach sonatas and partitas incognito to commuters during the morning rush hour. The main thesis of the experiment, which resulted in a viral video, a children’s book and a documentary film, was: can we recognize high art when we take it out of its “natural environment”? Out of almost 1,100 people who passed by in three quarters of an hour, only one woman identified the violinist.
Violinist Joshua Bell conducted an experiment in 2007 while playing incognito on the Washington subway. Only one woman recognized him. | Video: Washington Post
The five elements
Bell is a true artist of the 21st century. Soloist, chamber player, leader and conductor, Grammy winner and educator. Versatile, ready to experiment, not distinguishing between so-called classical and popular music.
“I once sat down with Frankie Moreno, a pop rock pianist and singer I ran into in Vegas, and we wrote a transcription of the Beatles song Eleanor Rigby. It was a fun, musically challenging puzzle that took the essence of the song and turned it into something more complex, ” he told, for example, in 2009 how his then-album At Home with Friends was born.
In Prague, he will play Dvořák’s violin concerto, which he has already performed many times, for example in 2019 at the BBC Proms festival with the Bamber Symphony conducted by Jakub Hrůša.
The London Orchestra’s performance at the Rudolfinum culminates with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Symphony No. 41. However, he will start with a composition by contemporary American author Kevin Puts, one of the five whom Joshua Bell approached during the coronavirus pandemic and closed concert halls with an offer to compose one movement of a concert or suite. The unifying motif was the five elements.
The piece can thus remind you of Antonio Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, one of the most successful recordings of the Academy of St. Martin in the fields.
Puts’s composition was premiered at a New York Philharmonic concert, and since then Joshua Bell has also performed its movements individually. Puts chose earth from the five elements, that’s why the work is called Earth. “Music expresses stability, anchoring, duration,” the author describes his work. According to him, however, the composition also has a certain meditative level, a prayer for our earthly home, and an appeal to protect it.