Azon Academy

Sur un malentendu…
Ça résume bien ma vie.
Ce matin, c'est la rentrée scolaire et je suis censée prendre mon poste de secrétaire à la Lakewood Academy, l'un des plus prestigieux campus de la région. Le standing est élevé, je me suis mise sur mon trente et un en mettant au placard mes tenues extravagantes. …

A 10 CD Box set with 23 Beautiful Mozart Piano Concertos. Alfred Brendel playing piano. Imogen Cooper also on piano. Accompanied by Academy of St. Martin-In-The-Fields orchestra. Conducted by Neville Marriner. This set is wonderful: Brendel is at the peak of his art, the conductor and the Orchestra are perfect, the sound is clear and old fashionable, very recommended.

The Academy of St Martin in the Fields (ASMF) is an English chamber orchestra, based in London. John Churchill, then Master of Music at the London church of St Martin-in-the-Fields, and Neville Marriner founded the orchestra as "The Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields", a small, conductorless string group. The ASMF gave its first concert on 13 November 1959, in the church after which it was named. In 1988, the orchestra dropped the hyphens from its full name.

The Academy of St Martin in the Fields (ASMF) is an English chamber orchestra, based in London. John Churchill, then Master of Music at the London church of St Martin-in-the-Fields, and Neville Marriner founded the orchestra as "The Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields", a small, conductorless string group. The ASMF gave its first concert on 13 November 1959, in the church after which it was named. In 1988, the orchestra dropped the hyphens from its full name.

There are many apocryphal stories in the classical-music world, but the one in which Frederick the Great challenged Bach to improvise a six-part fugue on a theme of the king's own invention is true, and The Musical Offering was, after a period of further reflection, the result. As with all the works of Bach's later years, the work is both great art and a "teaching piece," which shows everything that he thought could be done with the king's theme. The Trio Sonata based on the theme is the only major piece of chamber music from Bach's last decades in Leipzig, and that makes the work and essential cornerstone of any Bach collection. This performance, led by Neville Marriner, is both polished and lively, and very well recorded. At a "twofer" price, coupled with The Art of Fugue, it's the preferred version of the work on modern instruments.

Sir Neville Marriner conducts this 250th Anniversary performance. Soloists include Sylvia McNair, Anne Sofie Van Otter. The performance is supported by an informative background film "For Ever and Ever", explaining the circumstances behind the compositi.

Set in classical antiquily, Mozart’s "Il re pastore" tells of the thwarted love of Aminta (the innocent ‘shepherd king’ of the title) for the well-born Elisa, and that of the nobleman Agenore for the deposed tyrant’s daughter Tamiri. No less a figure than Alexander the Great resolves these conflicts of private passion and public status. First performed in Salzburg in 1775, Sir Neville Marriner conducts a top international cast in this 1989 production of the opera from Salzburg’s Landestheater.