Sir Neville Marriner [Richard Holt]

THERE was a time when they were never off the radio: you’d hear the music, then you’d hear the back-announcement saying “That was the Academy of St Martin in the Fields… conducted by Sir Neville Marriner”.

Between them, Marriner and the Academy he founded in the 1950s made so many discs they were maybe the most recorded partnership in history: a superstar brand. And when Marriner died in 2016, worldwide tributes poured in – not just because he was a great conductor but because he managed to combine it with being a delightful, decent, much-loved man. A rare achievement.

Next week he’d have been 100, and the centenary is being marked with vigour. On the birthday itself, April 15, Radio 3 devotes itself to Marriner from dawn to dusk. And that evening there’s a celebration concert at St Martin in the Fields, featuring the Academy with Marriner’s successor, Joshua Bell.

The following night, April 16, Bell and the Academy’s chamber ensemble play Wigmore Hall. And April 18 brings a grand gala concert at the Festival Hall at which you’ll hear a lot of the Mozart that surfaced in Marriner’s legendary soundtrack for the 1984 film Amadeus.

One of the issues that will doubtless surface in all this is that although the Academy carried the name of St Martin in the Fields across the world, the connection was loose. St Martin’s was simply the place where the band happened to give their first concert in 1961, borrowing the name in the process. Thereafter they were rarely present, always off on tour, and causing confusion as the outside world (particularly visiting Americans) assumed the building was their home and turned up at St Martin’s looking for them.

But a deeper involvement has in fact grown during recent years; and one example is a digital sound-walk around the streets of St Martin’s parish, developed by the Academy with rough-sleepers to highlight the church’s mission to homeless people.

At the same time, there’s an exhibition about Marriner’s life running in the church – with input from his indefatigable widow Molly, now in her 90s. I asked her recently what were Neville’s chief gifts; and alongside charm and humour she fixed on his ability to “recognise a good thing when it came his way”, seizing the opportunity. A lesson to us all. Full details of centenary events at asmf.org.uk

• The JW3 Centre in Finchley Road has been drawing some seriously big names to its new concert series, and the latest is pianist Angela Hewitt who appears April 14 playing Bach’s Goldberg Variations. One of today’s leading Bach interpreters, she’ll be a hot ticket. But worth trying for. jw3.org.uk

• Another big-name pianist these days is the charismatic Frenchman Bertrand Chamayou, currently in residence with the LSO and featuring in two concerts this week. One is a lunchtime solo recital April 12 at LSO St Luke’s. The other is an April 18 concerto date at the Barbican, playing Ravel under Antonio Pappano – who, in the same programme, conducts Vaughan Williams’ serenely pacific wartime symphony, No5. If there’s a more beautiful score in English orchestral repertoire, I don’t know of it. barbican.org.uk