Sir Neville Marriner

I have always had some deep interest in classical music.  I can't really say why - maybe it is the intricate mathematics of the overlay of sound from a variety of instruments, maybe it is the physics of music, maybe it is the immense talent it takes to write something for so many instruments.

Now, I am not a classical music expert.  However, if I have a chance, I will take the Neville Marriner version of a classical piece over any one else.  Marriner spent much of his career leading "The Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields".

It was Marriner's version of Handel's Messiah ( Worthy Is the Lamb & Amen ) that I heard on WHRO radio (Norfolk, VA, USA) in the 80's that got me hooked on that classical masterpiece.  Marriner was also the music director of the movie Ammadeus and insisted that all of the Mozart pieces be done as intended, not pieced together to meet the demand of some movie schedule.  So, I bought the soundtrack ... it is fabulous.  One piece, near the end of the movie, Mass for the Dead, was set to show the composition process that Mozart and Salieri used to write such moving music.  The scene then cuts to Mozart's death while the entire score is played ( confutatis ).  The depth of sound was amazing. 

I borrowed another version of Mozart's mass from the library.  It was some eastern European symphony (Prague or Budapest, or something like that).  While it was quite nice, it just did not have the richness and power of Marriner's version.

In a Marriner-directed piece, trumpets bark, kettle drums roll like thunder, strings glide together and almost sing, woodwinds breathe.