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Sir Neville Marriner 1924-2016: a life in pictures

With an illustrious career and extensive discography behind him, Sir Neville Marriner was still performing with the orchestra he founded - the Academy of St Martin in the Fields - when he died at the age of 92.

  1. 1. Early musical experience

    Neville Marriner was born on 15 April 1924 in Lincoln. He was taught the violin, initially by his father, before entering the Royal College of Music at 13. During the Second World War, while still studying – and when so many orchestral players were serving away - Marriner had the extraordinary experience of playing with great orchestras including the LSO, under such conductors as Sir Henry Wood.

  2. 2. Active service in the Royal Navy

    When he himself was called up during World War II, Marriner served in the Royal Navy, participating in motorboat raids into France. He was invalided out of the Navy with kidney damage. After the war he returned to the Royal College of Music and then went to complete his studies at the Paris Conservatoire.

  3. 3. Teacher and violinist

    After te

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    Sir Neville Marriner was born in Lincoln in 1924 and studied the violin first in London at the Royal College of Music and then at the Paris Conservatoire with René Benedetti. After teaching for a year at Eton College, in 1949 he joined the Martin String Quartet, and with musicologist Thurston Dart formed the Jacobean Ensemble, which specialized in 17th- and 18th-century music. From 1952 to 1968 he was a violinist with the London Philharmonia and with the London Symphony Orchestra, of which he was principal second violin for twelve years beginning in 1956. During this period he also formed the Virtuoso String Trio, and then, in 1959, the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Sir Neville gravitated increasingly toward conducting and took lessons from Pierre Monteux. His first appointment was in 1969 with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. In 1979 he became music director of the Minnesota Orchestra, holding that post until 1986, when he returned to Europe as music director of the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra (until 1989). Throughout the whole period he continued to work with t

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    Biography

    Sir Neville Marriner and The Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields (or “Marriner and the Academy” as they became affectionately known) led the way in the stereo recording of lighter, more transparent and, quite simply, better played performances of Baroque and, later, Classical repertoire. This happy combination of circumstances provided a whole generation of music lovers with recordings which to this day have stood the test of time. It is hard to imagine a record collection anywhere in the world unblessed by Marriner and his Academy. 

    Neville himself was the ideal recording artist, first leading from the violin, and later when the group enlarged, as conductor. He had himself “sprung up though the orchestra as one of the team”  but remained always unpretentious and self-deprecating. But this was allied to a drive and passion that ensured standards were maintained at the highest level throughout, particularly in the recording studio. The result was that most professional orchestral musicians aspired to be in his orchestra.   

    Founded in 1958 from an elite group of London’

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