St. Martin musicians rare breed

It would be fair to say that the musicians of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields have a hilarious time with their work. Playing to a half-filled Maine Center for the Arts on Sunday, the England-based ensemble of 18 strings and a whole lot of smiles gave a most jocular concert.

During Benjamin Britten’s brightly lit Simple Symphony, Op. 8, the string players were at their good-humored best. As they slid through the movements called “Boisterous Bourree” and “Playful Pizzicato,” they completely took on the cartoonishness of the piece. Their fingers hopped about on the necks of their instruments. They tickled and strummed the strings. They could have tittered or ribbed each other with their bows and it would have seemed as if it were part of the general tone of this brisk and wry composition.

The third movement, “Sentimental Sarabande” — the kind of music people want you to imagine when they mock-play a violin as you tell your woes — was the perfect comedic counterpoint. The drama of the high strings pressed the joke further, and “Frolicsome Finale” topped off the piece with great levity.

The same lightness marked Serenade in C Major, Op. 10, by Hungarian composer Erno Dohnanyi. With extraordinary deftness, the musicians moved in and out of the moods of this crafty little number. Up went the mirth with the lively strings, while the cellos rumbled a foreboding message below. Similar to a soundtrack from an Alfred Hitchcock film, there were whimsy and warning wrapped around each other in an agitating and gleeful wrestle.

As with the Britten piece, this one had a wild range of color and tone. But whether the melody was lyrical, laughable, cerebral or sensual, the musicians had inspired rhythm, clarity and intonation. The group plays without a formal conductor, but first violinist Kenneth Sillito led masterfully from his chair, and the group’s mutual spirit and cohesiveness were nothing short of heavenly.

In the final work, Serenade for Strings in E major, Op. 22, by Antonin Dvorak, the musicians made their instruments laugh with the upbeat rhythms. You could hear the “ha, ha” and the “yuck, yuck, yuck” skipping about the hall. And when it was time to turn sweet or sad, the musicians were right there, reaching deep, but never sacrificing spontaneity and always coming through with vitality and ability. And as if all this weren’t enough, three encores further underscored that the St. Martin in the Fields musicians are a rare and fervent group.