Mark Simpson Night Music Leonard Elschenbroich cello Alexei Grynyuk piano Mercury Quartet Richard Uttley piano Mark Simpson clarinet Víkingur Ólafsson piano Ian Buckle piano Nicholas Daniel oboe Guy Johnston cello Ensemble 10/10 Clark Rundell conductor Jonathan Small oboe 2 Mark Simpson Notes by Mark Simpson Night Music Night Music (2014) Ariel (2009) Night Music is cast in one large Ariel is scored for basset clarinet, violin, 1 Night Music (2014) 15’03 movement with four distinct sections. cello and piano, and is a response to Leonard Elschenbroich cello It inhabits a world of dreams, the poem of the same name by Sylvia Alexei Grynyuk piano nightmares, moonlight and darkness, Plath. I reacted to the poem musically, 2 Ariel (2009) 13’14 beginning in a quasi-somnambulant jotting down the ideas for instrumental Mercury Quartet state, with a blurring of melodic lines combinations, as well as the emotional and harmony. With a lack of distinct content as I read the words. The piece 3 (2009) 7’47 Barkham Fantasy pulse, we feel as though we could be begins, (‘Stasis in darkness…’) and Richard Uttley piano floating.The music gradually intensifies gradually wakens up to a furious outburst and leads us to the second section which 4 Echoes and Embers (2012) 11’10 in all the instruments. Scales descend is rhythmically driven, cutting from Mark Simpson clarinet to the depths of the instruments’ ranges, moment to moment as though in a night- Víkingur Ólafsson piano out of which a slow, winding duet for time chase. The third section begins with basset clarinet and cello leads to the 5 (2006) 3’46 a beautiful, high, singing cello melody Lov(escape) centre of the work – a slow, calm three- Mark Simpson clarinet with a gurgling piano accompaniment. A chord chorale. The work then comes Ian Buckle piano lullaby-like piano solo follows, interrupted by a piercingly expressive high cello, to a stand-still where short outbursts 6 Un Regalo (2004) 7’21 followed by expressive pizzicati. In the are gradually transformed into new, Guy Johnston cello fourth and final section the cello emerges faster material. The three-chord chorale motif then goes through a number 7 (2013) 6’17 from the depths of the piano in a slow, Windflower of permutations until a recap of the Nicholas Daniel oboe long line that gradually rises and leads to an explosive, emotionally powerful opening’s outburst is quickly sidelined by 8 Nur Musik (2008) 9’48 climax. The coda quotes moments from a boldly expressive return of the chorale Jonathan Small oboe the previous sections and draws the work motif. This piece is about extremes – Ensemble 10/10 gently to a close. extremes of expression, of instrumental Clark Rundell conductor textures and capabilities. Night Music is dedicated to Leonard Total timing 75’17 Elschenbroich. Ariel is dedicated to the Mercury Quartet. © Kaupo Kikkas 3 Barkham Fantasy (2009) Barkham Fantasy is dedicated to Richard whilst the second is more erratic and the instruments, while the second is This piece was written during my stay at Uttley. desperate to escape. They can be seen as a relentless tarantella-like music with both connected and separate, hence the erratic outbursts leading to a third, Barkham, an idyllic converted farmhouse Echoes and Embers (2012) amidst the backdrop of the Devonshire formation of the title. broader expressive music where intense Echoes and Embers is a work that explores melodic gestures meld, shift, and fall moors. I wanted the piece to resemble a The first section sees the development of an intimate relationship between clarinet ghostly shadow of a slow movement from upon each other. The last section is a and piano. Quiet, delicate textures are this idea, while the second concentrates a Mozart or Haydn piano sonata. Whilst quiet, distant recap of the opening which heard in both instruments, interspersed solely on the latter, more erratic gesture, composing, I had an unsettling feeling fades to nothing. with silences that serve both to puncture displaying the virtuosic capabilities of being watched from a window in the and connect material. Resonance, echoes of the clarinet with some extended Un Regalo is dedicated to Guy Johnston. barn I was working in. Over the course and a blurring of elements are a primary techniques – including screaming of my stay, I was gradually instilled feature of this work, leading towards an through the instrument, glissandi, and Windflower (2014) with a sense of fear and unease which impassioned climax where tension is flutter-tonguing. In the final section I try Windflower was written as a companion manifested itself in the music I was both released and accumulated. There to reconcile the differences between the piece to Benjamin Britten’s Six writing. The idea of ghosts, hauntings is an inherent ambiguity to the work: two characters, with wild swoops in both Metamorphoses after Ovid for solo oboe. and shadows inevitably played a larger the compositional procedures can be instruments ending in a frantic struggle The task was to write a piece based on part in this piece than I had originally viewed as doing two separate things between the two. another of Ovid’s tales that Benjamin envisaged. Barkham Fantasy falls into simultaneously. The material can be both Britten had not used for his set. Instead I two sections; the first characterised an echo of something heard, a dying Un Regalo (2015) used Ted Hughes’s own brilliant Tales of by a slow alberti bass figure in the ember, and something that serves to have This piece was written to celebrate the Ovid as a point of inspiration and chose left hand and stratospheric melodies the potential to awaken and become more 300th birthday of Guy Johnston’s David ‘Venus and Adonis’. At the end of the tale, in the right hand. The second section important. Techler cello. The title is Italian for ‘gift’. at the point of Adonis’s brutal slaughter by sees the introduction of a new melody I wanted to showcase not just Guy’s a wild boar, Venus rips her hair and clasps Echoes and Embers is dedicated to my where the alberti figure is morphed into brilliant musicianship but also the innate at her skin, holding Adonis to her chest as friend Joe O’Brien. a tremolando figuration, coupled with understanding he has of the instrument he dies whilst screaming to the Fates. His schizophrenic outbursts that lead to blood splatters to the floor and she hails Lov(escape) (2006) he plays and its qualities. The fantastic swirling virtuosic piano textures. A dark, resonance of the instrument is what that it will bloom into an immortal flower. sombre chorale figure, superimposed Lov(escape) was written for my semi-final inspired the opening gesture, with the two Pouring nectar into his mangled body, his with the opening material, rises up from recital for the BBC Young Musician of lowest open strings dictating the opening blood begins to seethe. Soon after there the depths of the piano and leads to the the Year competition in 2006. The title chord, harmony and shape of the work. stands a delicate, bright, blood-coloured work’s climax after which the debris of refers to the relationship between the two flower. Its life is brief – the petals fall at the chorale is left to settle within the gestures that characterise the first idea: The piece is in four sections. The the first breeze of the wind that flows over resonance of the whole piece. the opening is yearning and romantic, first showcases lyrical extremes of them. Windflower is its name. 4 5 I wanted to show the passionate wailings of Venus coupled with the unstable, Mark Simpson flowing nature of the Windflower. Windflower is dedicated to Nicholas Composer and clarinettist Mark Simpson and IdeasTap, receiving immediate Simpson’s ensemble works have been Daniel. (b.1988, Liverpool) became the first critical acclaim: ‘blazingly original ’ performed by such ensembles as London ever winner of both the BBC Young (The Guardian); ‘the best new choral Sinfonietta, Psappha and Ensemble Nur Musik (2008) Musician of the Year and BBC Proms/ work I’ve heard in years’ (The Times). 10/10, while as a chamber musician When I was approached to write for Guardian Young Composer of the Year Other orchestral works include Israfel Mark has performed with Isabelle Faust, Ensemble 10/10 in 2008, the year competitions in 2006. He went on to (2014), premiered by the BBC Scottish Angela Hewitt, Pierre-Laurent Aimard Liverpool was European Capital of read Music at St. Catherine’s College, Symphony Orchestra and Andrew Litton, and Jean-Guihen Queyras, among others. Culture, I immediately heard the sound Oxford, and studied composition sparks (2012), commissioned for the He also performs regularly as a concerto of a soaring oboe line wrapped inside a with Julian Anderson at the Guildhall Last Night of the Proms and A mirror- soloist, notably in Nielsen’s Clarinet dense, dark and murky ensemble texture, School of Music & Drama, before being fragment… (2008), written for the Royal Concerto at the 2015 BBC Proms with fighting to be heard amongst aggressive, selected for representation by the Young Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Sir Classical Artists Trust. Simpson was a Andrew Davis and most recently in volatile and even explosive music. Recent highlights include the premiere Immediately after, in stark contrast, I BBC New Generation Artist from 2012- Magnus Lindberg’s Clarinet Concerto with of Simpson’s first opera Pleasure, heard softer, tender and more intimate 2014. He received a Borletti-Butoni the BBC Philharmonic and HK Gruber. with a libretto by Melanie Challenger, music.