Mark Simpson releases world premiere recording of 'Geysir' together with Mozart's 'Gran Partita

Label: Orchid Classics

Catalogue number: ORC100150

Release date: November 20^th 2020

ABOUT THE ALBUM

Orchid Classics is delighted to present a stunning pairing of Mozart’s glorious ‘Gran Partita’ Serenade with a work written specifically to be performed alongside it, Geysir by the exceptional clarinettist-composer, Mark Simpson.

Mark Simpson’s simmering, volcanic Geysir was commissioned by the Britten Sinfonia as a partner to Mozart’s Serenade in B flat (K. 361), the ‘Gran Partita’, drawing on the same instrumental forces: pairs of oboes, clarinets, basset horns, bassoons, four horns, and double bass. Geysir – the Icelandic word for geyser, from the Old Norse geysa, “to gush” – is also the musical eruption of two musical ideas from Mozart’s Serenade: the rich opening chord, and its bubbling clarinet writing in the fifth variation of the sixth movement. These ideas develop into what Simpson describes as a “flurry of colour and harmonic shifts”.

As a clarinettist himself, Mark Simpson found writing Geysir to be “an instinctive thing – it never felt like trying to overcome any limitations. By the time I’d written the piece I’d played and directed the ‘Gran Partita’ several times. I remember that I really wanted to showcase the horns as they don’t get that much to do in the Mozart. I’d not written for basset horns before, and when I was re-listening to the ‘Gran Partita’ I wanted to try and use them in a more soloistic way…” Simpson adds: “I’m very proud of it – I think it sits well alongside the Mozart. It has an expressive depth and a virtuosity of colour.”

Mark Simpson was the first ever winner of both the BBC Young Musician of the Year and BBC Proms/Guardian Young Composer of the Year competitions in 2006. By 2019 he was composer in residence at the Leicester International Music Festival, and is currently working on a Violin Concerto for Nicola Benedetti and commissions for the London Symphony Orchestra, WDR Sinfonieorchester and Royal Scottish National Orchestra.

Mark Simpson performs on this release alongside a line-up of other extraordinary musicians including fellow clarinettist Fraser Langton; oboists Nicholas Daniel and Emma Feilding; Amy Harman and Dom Tyler (bassoons); Oliver Pashley and Ausiàs Garrigós Morant (basset horns); Ben Goldscheider, Angela Barnes, James Pillai, Fabian van de Geest (horns) and David Stark (double bass).

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Mark Simpson

Composer and clarinettist Mark Simpson (b.1988, Liverpool) became the first ever winner of both the BBC Young Musician of the Year and BBC Proms/Guardian Young Composer of the Year competitions in 2006. He went on to read Music at St. Catherine’s College, Oxford, and studied composition with Julian Anderson at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, before being selected for representation by the Young Classical Artists Trust. Simpson was a BBC New Generation Artist from 2012-2014. He received a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship in 2014 and the Royal Philharmonic Society Composition Award in 2010, and was a Visiting Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. In 2015 he was appointed Composer in Association of the BBC Philharmonic for a period of four years.

Simpson’s The Immortal (2015), an oratorio for baritone, chorus and symphony orchestra, was premiered by the BBC Philharmonic and Juanjo Mena at the Manchester International Festival, with support from Sky Arts Futures Fund and IdeasTap, receiving immediate critical acclaim: ‘blazingly original’ (The Guardian); ‘the best new choral work I’ve heard in years’ (The Times). Other orchestral works include Israfel (2014), premiered by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Andrew Litton, sparks (2012), commissioned for the Last Night of the Proms and A mirror-fragment… (2018), written for the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.

Highlights of 2016 included the premiere of Simpson’s first opera Pleasure, with a libretto by Melanie Challenger, commissioned by Opera North, the Royal Opera and Aldeburgh Music with performances in Leeds, Liverpool, Aldeburgh and London. Simpson also premiered Hommage à Kurtág for clarinet, piano and viola with Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Antoine Tamestit, commissioned by the Salzburg and Edinburgh International festivals. He also gave the online premiere of Darkness Moves for solo clarinet, commissioned by the Borletti-Buitoni Trust. Under his Composer in Association role with the BBC Philharmonic Simpson has composed a Cello Concerto for Leonard Elschenbroich in 2018 and a Clarinet Concerto for himself as soloist in 2019.

Simpson performs widely as a soloist and chamber musician and is hugely committed to the performance of new music. He performed and recorded the Lindberg Clarinet Concerto with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Adams’s Gnarly Buttons with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, and has given many solo performances including with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic (Vasily Petrenko), Northern Sinfonia (Yan Pascal Tortelier), BBC Philharmonic (Gianandrea Noseda), City of London Sinfonia and BBC Concert Orchestra. He has played recitals at Wigmore Hall, Royal Festival Hall, Sage Gateshead, Cheltenham Festival, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, BeethovenFest, O’Modernt and Trasimeno Festivals, with premieres of works by Simon Holt, Jonathan Harvey and Edmund Finnis.

Simpson performed Magnus Lindberg’s Clarinet Concerto with the BBC Philharmonic and HK Gruber in February 2016 and was invited to play the concerto again in Salzburg in November of the same year and at the 2018 BBC Proms with Juanjo Mena. During summer 2016 he made his debut at the Edinburgh and Salzburg festivals in a trio programme of Schumann and Kurtág, alongside his own new work, with Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Antoine Tamestit. In 2019 he was composer in residence at the Leicester International Music Festival, who co-commissioned his Oboe Quartet for oboist Nicholas Daniel, and in 2020 he is featured composer at the Trondheim Chamber Music Festival, the first major feature of his music in Norway. Simpson is currently working on a Violin Concerto for Nicola Benedetti with commissioners including the London Symphony Orchestra, WDR Sinfonieorchester and Royal Scottish National Orchestra.

Track listing

Mark Simpson (b.1988)

1 Geysir (world premiere recording) 7.55

W.A Mozart (1752-1796)

Serenade No.10, K.361 ‘Gran Partita’

2 I. Largo – Molto Allegro 9.24

3 II. Menuetto – Trio – Trio II 8.26

4 III. Adagio 5.06

5 IV. Menuetto – Allegretto – Trio – Trio II 8.22

6 V. Romanze: Adagio – Allegretto – Adagio 4.48

7 VI. Thema mit 6 Variationen – Andante 10.06

8 VII. Finale – Molto allegro 3.24