Academy of St Martin in the Fields Performs at Carnegie Hall

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Wednesday, 11 March 2026 15:06

Written by Jack Angstreich

Photo by Fadi Kheir

At the wonderful Stern Auditorium, on the night of Thursday, March 5th, I had the privilege to attend an excellent concert of nineteenth-century music—presented by Carnegie Hall—featuring the superb Academy of St Martin in the Fields, under the accomplished leadership of the celebrated virtuoso violinist Joshua Bell—he conducted as the concertmaster, rather than from the podium.

The event started very promisingly with a sterling realization of the remarkable, underappreciated Variations on “America” by Charles Ives, which received its final revision around 1949. It is a piece for organ that was here played in an arrangement by Iain Farrington and, according to the useful notes on the program by Jack Sullivan, it consists “of an introduction, nine variations on ‘America (My Country ‘Tis of Thee),’ and a coda.” He adds: “It is an early work, originally written when he was 17, prepared for a Fourth of July celebration in 1892 at the Methodist church where he was organist in Brewster, New York.”

Bell then confidently performed as soloist in an admirable reading of the outstanding Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 77, by Johannes Brahms, from 1878. The initial, Allegro non troppo movement opens somewhat majestically and then very passionately—this emotional tenor is largely sustained with the entry of the soloist and thereafter but much of his contribution is also highly lyrical. After the cadenza, here composed by Bell, it concludes emphatically. The succeeding Adagio is also song-like but reflects a more serene, sunnier mood; it ends very softly. Thefinale—marked Allegro giocoso, ma non troppo vivace—is exhilarating and energetic, although there are more restrained passages; it closes triumphantly.

The second half of the evening was even more memorable, consisting of a bracing account of Robert Schumann’s splendid Symphony No. 1 in B-flat Major, Op. 38, the “Spring,” from 1841. The composer wrote to a friend in that year, saying: “Think of it! A whole symphony—and moreover, a Spring Symphony!” In a “letter to Wilhelm Taubert, who was to conduct the symphony in 1843, as the annotator records, he commented:

Could you breathe a little of the longing for spring into your orchestra as they play? That was what was most in my mind when I wrote the symphony in January 1841. I should like the very first trumpet entrance to sound as if it came from on high, like a summons to awakening. Further on in the introduction, I would like the music to suggest the world's turning green, perhaps with a butterfly hovering in the air, and then, in the Allegro, to show how everything to do with spring is coming alive. 

He added, “These, however, are ideas that came into my mind only after I had completed the piece.” Sullivan reports, citing Schumann, that “the only premeditated detail was that the finale represented ‘the departure of spring’ and should therefore be performed ‘in a manner not too frivolous.’” 

The first movement begins in a stately fashion—Andante un poco maestoso—but more turbulent music quickly comes to the fore; its main body has a more rousing ethos but with sometimes more “pastoral” elements which are at times quite charming in character—it finishes affirmatively. The ensuing Larghetto radiates a certain nobility that ultimately proves enchanting; it concludes very quietly. The Scherzo—its tempo is Molto vivace—has a joyous, even celebratory quality, with two contrasting Trio sections; it too ends gently. The Allegro animato e grazioso finale is often lilting and dance-like but with some more exuberant measures; at times suspenseful, it closes forcefully. Enthusiastic applause elicited a marvelous encore from the ensemble that was the highlight of the entire concert: the Scherzo from Antonín Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9 in E minor, Op. 95, “From the New World,” from 1893.

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