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Marianne and Co serve up a dazzling blend - who remembers Nippy waitresses, or the Lyons Corner House cafes where they served during the dark days of the Second World War? More people than you’d think, including many not even born at that time. The reason is the music which accompanied them on their rounds from table to table. It hailed from Budapest, Vienna and Buenos Aires and was played by musicians from those cities but in a peculiarly British blend. And in the effervescent Marianne Olyver and her orchestra, this blend has found its own group of contemporary superstars. Marianne took up the violin when she was 12, winning a place in the National Youth Orchestra and starting a solo career. But whenever she gave a recital it was the encores she looked forward to. “The light virtuoso stuff, the lollipops at the end, when I had the audience in the palm of my hand. I took lessons from the great Alfredo Campoli, who was a past master at such things.” Then she got together some like-minded friends and persuaded them to join her for a concert at London’s St Martin-in-the-Fields. “I decided to do lots of virtuoso things. I just wanted the concert to be fun.” The audience loved it, the critics wrote rave reviews and she realised she was on to something.
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They did six more concerts, trying out costumes and different styles of presentation, until the performance became a form of theatre. “But the most important thing remained the music,” she says. “If It doesn’t dazzle, it’s nothing.” They then embarked on a mailshot campaign and over the past nine years have found stardom, with a solid band of followers all over the country. Marianne explains: “We bring our audience with us. I feel this is where music has to go, to break down the traditional barrier between players and audience. When we perform it’s like a family gathering with people getting up and dancing.” They’ve made their mark with Classic FM and Radio 2 but they still suffer from the snobbery in the trade. Their albums are selling well, but through direct marketing at concerts and the Internet, not at record shops. Olyver has had offers from some labels, but she’s not tempted. “I couldn’t imagine signing away ownership of the thing I have created.” They’d make great soundtrack artists, and would have been perfect for Titanic, had the I Salonisti band not got there first. But Olyver’s not jealous - the Italian group are far too sedate and lacking in the thrill factor for her liking. Michael Church on music in the Sunday Express 27th May 2001
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Dark Eyes - Marianne Olyver and her Gypsy Orchestra - A FORMER leader of the National Youth Orchestra, violinist Marianne Olyver is currently touring the UK with a “salon orchestra”, performing the kind of light music that used to be heard in grand hotels and elegant tea houses. For this disc the band has been rechristened in honour of the exotic slant of the repertoire, combining dashes of Romany, Hungarian and klezmer music. Although some will carp that there are more “authentic” gipsy ensembles around, the tradition that Olyver is honouring is actually a valid and complex one. The so-called Hungarian Gipsy orchestras that flourished before the First World War often involved conservatoire-trained musicians playing specially commissioned compositions and arrangements. So Monti’s Czárdás rubs shoulders with Massenet’s Meditation and Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Flight of the Bumble Bee. Olyver’s fiddle has a suitably dusky tone and her splendid ensemble really get into the swing of things. There are thrilling solos from Heather Corbett on xylophone and cimbalom (the twangy Hungarian zither), and similar flamboyance from Merlin Shepherd on klezmer clarinet and Dominic Seldis on double bass. A thoroughly toe-tapping affair. Brian Hunt, music critic, the Daily Telegraph May 2000 top of page |
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