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Simon Streatfeild, viola player and conductor who co-founded the Academy of St Martin in the Fields – obituary
Simon Streatfeild
12 December 2019 • 5:04pm
Simon Streatfeild, who has died aged 90, was a viola player and founding member of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields before emigrating in 1965 to Canada, where he reinvented himself as a conductor and made a significant contribution to Canadian music-making.
In the autumn of 1958 Streatfeild was one of a small group who met in a pub near Trafalgar Square to persuade the violinist Neville Marriner to form and lead a new chamber orchestra whose members would, in the words of its official history, be "refugees from the conductor".
Streatfeild was one of a small group who, as the Ambrosian Players, were involved in a BBC radio series from stately homes introduced by Richard Dimbleby. He was responsible for booking the players but for one programme from Hampton Court forgot to arrange a continuo player.
Fate, however, played a hand. "There was a chap looking round the pictures," Streatfeild recalled. "He wasn't a member of the union or anything, but he could play the harpsichord quite well enough – and he saved the broadcast."
Simon Nicholas Streatfeild was born in Windsor, Berkshire, on October 5 1929, and in 1946 entered the Royal College of Music to study viola under Frederick Riddle. In 1953 he was appointed principal viola of the Sadler's Wells Orchestra and three years later became principal viola of the London Symphony Orchestra, where he got to know Marriner.
Streatfeild, whose sensitive use of the bow would draw an alluring tone from his instrument, also gave solo recitals, including music by Berkeley, Rawsthorne, Britten and Hindemith at the Cheltenham Festival in 1962. Three years later he was the soloist in Berlioz's Harold in Italy with the LSO at the Proms.
Moving to Canada, he was appointed principal viola of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and within two years was also assistant conductor. In 1971 he served as acting music director after the departure of Meredith Davies and thereafter was associate conductor until 1977.
In 1982 he became director of the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra, taking them to regular appearances on CBC Radio. The following year he was named director of the Quebec Symphony Orchestra, an appointment that lasted for nine years until he was sacked for criticising its management's plans to cut the number of full-time musicians. He was also a devotee of choral music, directing the Vancouver Bach Choir from 1969 to 1981.
Only occasionally was he seen in the UK, one such occasion being in 1992, when he conducted the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra in Strauss's Alpine Symphony. He spent many happy hours on the river fly-fishing and was an avid follower of tennis and cricket.
One of Streatfeild's earliest recordings with the Academy was as soloist in Telemann's Viola Concerto in G on a disc titled A Recital for Strings. The record company's budget for sessions was limited to one three-hour session, but the van delivering the harpsichord broke down and by the time the instrument arrived there was only an hour remaining. Although a Gramophone critic described his solo work as "projected with a marvellously rich tone", 20 years later he was still saying there were two passages that he itched to re-record.
In 1951 Streatfeild married the British pianist Elizabeth Winship, with whom he often appeared in concert. She survives him with their daughter, Sarah, a violinist with the London Philharmonic Orchestra; another daughter, Theresa, predeceased him.
Simon Streatfeild, born October 5 1929, died December 7 2019
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