Tuesday 7th January 1975 was a red-letter day in the history of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields. That evening, the audience in the Rheinhalle Düsseldorf (now the Tonhalle) waited in excited anticipation for a concert given by the world-famous orchestra led by its legendary conductor (later to become Sir) Neville Marriner. But this was to be no regular Academy performance, outstanding though the orchestra’s concerts always were, for it was to be the first ever appearance of the newly formed Academy Chorus. To add to the excitement, the work to be performed was no less than the Bach Mass in B minor. What was this hitherto unknown English choir going to make of arguably the greatest piece of choral music ever written, and by a German composer at that? (View the programme from the second date of the tour in Berlin here: Chorus 50 – programme for Berlin, 8.1.75)
The answer came soon enough. In the words of Sylvia Holford, the orchestra’s General Manager and chorus member: ‘At the interval the applause simply exploded. We were bowled over… but then when we came back for the second half they simply clapped and clapped… and we sat down and they kept clapping, so we stood up again and they were still clapping – it was very moving.’* The German critics were no less impressed, with Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt writing in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that this was ‘an important new step… towards a musically true Bach interpretation.’ The Academy had another feather to its bow, and a mightily impressive one at that.
The seed for this auspicious beginning to the life of the Chorus had been sown the previous year, when the Academy’s German agent Hans Ulrich Schmid made the proposal of a German tour of the B minor Mass. The orchestra approached London’s leading choirs with the proposal, but they all wanted to appear at full strength, which would have been far too large for what was to be a relatively small instrumental ensemble. It seemed that the project would never get off the ground, but Sylvia Holford suggested that the Academy form its own chorus, trained to perform in the same style as the orchestra, with its light-touch approach to Baroque music. Her suggestion was eagerly adopted, and Sylvia asked Laszlo Heltay, a very experienced chorus trainer who had already founded several high-profile choirs in England, to work with her to recruit singers who could reach the very high standards expected of them. Between them they formed a group selected from the various choirs with which they had worked, and the hard work of training began.
Laszlo Heltay was the ideal choice of chorus master. He studied the orchestra’s playing style, noted the need for accuracy, flexibility and the ability to sing semiquaver runs at Marriner’s unusually high speeds, and drilled the chorus using a combination of technical exercises to achieve the desired result. Perhaps his greatest asset was his constant search for improvement, not in a way that made the singers feel that they could never be good enough, but in a way that encouraged each and every member of the chorus to give of their best, and to show the energy and commitment to the highest standards of music-making that marked the playing culture of the orchestra. And he had great charisma, essential in turning an assembly of individuals into a cohesive group, both musically and, just as importantly, socially. As Sylvia Holford remarked, ‘Laszlo took 72 strangers – they all knew him, but they didn’t know each other – and he moulded them into a chorus in three rehearsals flat.’*
When rehearsals with Neville Marriner and the orchestra began, there was a slight culture clash between conductor and chorus. Eleanor Boulter, an original member of the alto section, recalled ‘The first time you hear the sopranos told to “bring in the washing, it’s flapping about”, you do blink, and it can be unnerving to be called a second fiddle.’* Marriner also used such instructions as ‘Sing this note off the string’, and ‘This phrase starts on an up-bow.’ But perhaps most contentious of all was his habit, born of working with less accomplished choirs, of giving the chorus their notes before the B minor Mass’s opening Kyrie, where the chorus starts straight in without an orchestral introduction. Trained to take their notes from the orchestra’s tuning A, the singers took offense at this; challenged by Marriner to repeat the feat at his first rehearsal the chorus came in confidently on the correct chord, and his respect was duly earned.
That first tour was a resounding success, with Hans Ulrich Schmid describing it as quite simply ‘a sensation’. The Düsseldorf audience’s enthusiasm was repeated throughout the rest of the week, which included performances in the Berliner Philharmonie, the Musikhalle Hamburg (now the Laeiszhalle) and the Kuppelsaal Hannover, and was to be continued over the following 30 years of the Chorus’s activities. The work that Sylvia Holford, Laszlo Heltay and Neville Marriner did to prepare for those ground-breaking performances set the tone for a generation of outstanding concerts, recordings and tours which introduced global audiences to the highest standards of choral singing and further cemented the Academy’s reputation for excellence. Their legacy lives on to this day in the many choirs and ensembles founded by former members of the Chorus, all of which strive to emulate those standards, and in friendships started 50 years ago which continue to thrive.
*As quoted in The Academy of St Martin in the Fields by Meirion and Susie Harries (Michael Joseph, 1981)
Douglas Somers-Lee
5th January 2025