http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/03/arts/music/neville-marriner-prolific-musician-and-acclaimed-conductor-dies-at-92.html?action=click&contentCollection=obituaries&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront&_r=0
 
Marriner was a great artist. Interesting point in the article about how he was driven to conduct because he was a mediocre violinist. The performance he gets out of Iona Brown (and the Academy of St. Martin's in the Fields) in Lark Ascending is astonishing. Approaches perfection. A synaesthetic feast for the ears:
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzONNtE_WqM
 
Marriner and his splendid ensemble recorded one of the greatest marriages of a masterpiece with a performance/recording ever. It sounds as though the entire ensemble had been playing this great composition for a long time and had internalized it to the point where it lives & becomes a breathing entity as it flows out of their collective mind. I have listened to this version of The Lark Ascending hundreds of times and I never fail to be inspired. (I could go on and on.)

He was certainly a great conductor and ahead of his time - period performances are now mainstream

RIP.
 
By some strange coincidence, I've been listening to Marriner & Academy of St. Martin's Bach: Brandenburg Concertos - Orchestral Suites - Violin Concertos every chance I get for the last week or so.
 
 

One of my first Classical CD's was of him conducting Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik.  RIP!

Rain
RIP.
 
By some strange coincidence, I've been listening to Marriner & Academy of St. Martin's Bach: Brandenburg Concertos - Orchestral Suites - Violin Concertos every chance I get for the last week or so.
 
 

Rain,
I checked out the recordings you mentioned. Real good stuff. Thanks for sharing.
 
Cheers,
 
Bert