Tag Archives: Mark Simpson

Perth Festival: Ora Singers

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St John’s Kirk, Perth

The most unchanged and regularly used venue in the half century of the Perth Festival of the Arts is also roughly contemporaneous with some of the music often heard there, the a cappella singing of the great Renaissance composers.

The opening concert of this year’s festival at St John’s was by a choir making its debut at the festival, Ora Singers, but the shape of the repertoire they brought was familiar enough to fill the kirk, mixing that repertoire with some of the recent flowering of new music for the same forces. It was an evening not without glitches – and congratulations to the choir’s manager for eventually identifying the user of the rogue whistling hearing aid – but it had a reassuring format with some nice original touches.

Choir director Suzi Digby’s vigorous conducting style and crystal-clear beat speaks of her long experience. That rhythmic control of her singers was especially apparent in a bracingly fresh reading of Palestrina’s Assumpta est Maria and in the rhythmic complexities of Mark Simpson’s Ave Maria.

Many of the new works had early music partners – Victoria’s Ave Maria preceding the Simpson, and David Bednall’s Assumpta following the Palestrina – but the newest, Electra Perivolaris’s An end without end, commissioned for the choir by the Duke of Buccleuch in memory of his late wife and setting words from Scots poet William Drummond’s A Cypress Grove, stood apart in both text and structure. If afforded a unique opportunity to hear the voices in the choir combine in duet, trio and quartet.

There were step-out solos throughout, of course, with one of the tenors especially impressive, and in ensemble it was the men who particularly shone, from rich bass sonorities to the single male among the altos. At other times the choir did divide, a sextet performing Cecilia McDowell’s Alma Redemptoris Mater, and the opening performance of Allegri’s Miserere including responses from singers not among those who processed around the audience.

The soaring soprano among those invisible voices was an early warning that some of the intonation was not always quite as precise as it should have been, but the theatre of the performance often made up for that.

Thankfully the sopranos sounded much more secure on Sir James MacMillan’s Miserere, closing the recital and completing the reflective nature of the programme. Fine though many of the other newer pieces were, it is a masterwork and there was really no following it.

Keith Bruce

RSNO / Afkham

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Glasgow Royal Concert Hall

If, as seems likely, this was her last full concert appearance before taking maternity leave, Nicola Benedetti chose an ideal work from which to take a step back, because it begged her swift return to performing.

I am sure I was not the only listener left in two minds by Mark Simpson’s Violin Concerto, co-commissioned by the RSNO, specifically written for Benedetti and twice postponed before she gave its Scottish premiere with the orchestra. The need to hear it again before coming to judgement is unarguable, because it is a packed, full-throttle piece for much of its length.

There are a lot of notes for the soloist to play, and much of it is the high-octane stuff at which Benedetti excels in established repertoire works. Her virtuosity was clearly as much of an inspiration as any external influences, and the composer’s citing of the Covid pandemic and lockdown as one such factor is not immediately obvious.

Written in five movements, but played uninterrupted, perhaps there is a catharsis in the manic second movement, but the more readily appreciable moments came later in the work. With a lot of work for a large percussion section and the brass, much of the earlier music was very loud, although the trombones and tuba were at their most interesting muted.

The concerto does calm down a little later, but still makes considerable demands of the soloist with double stopping and other virtuosic techniques even when the underscore was pared back to low strings and gong, or Pippa Tunnell’s harp. The harmonic flavour of the work draws on a wide range of ingredients, sometimes very Eastern sounding but ending in another boisterous movement that sounds very American, mixing the concert hall with the world of movie soundtrack.

Was there a discernible narrative arc to the whole piece? Further listening is required, but conductor David Afkham certainly shaped – and, crucially, balanced – the sections with great attention.

The German has been at the helm of the Spanish National Orchestra in senior posts for a decade and has extensive American experience as well. This was his RSNO debut and the Shostakovich Five he directed after the interval suggested a very useful partnership already. Under earlier chief conductors, this orchestra played more of this composer’s music than we have heard of late, but it still revels in it.

The Fifth, of course, was Shostakovich’s 1937 response to Stalin’s criticism (of the “muddle” of his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk), and much has been written and said about decoding its message. Afkham’s approach to the score was refreshingly direct, quite brisk in places that give other conductors pause, and, I think, entirely free of irony. It is a pretty bleak work in places, and the slow movement had a tangible feeling of utter resignation, but the RSNO wind soloists were on stellar form and the strings magnificent in the relentless single note that brings the work to its compelling conclusion.

Keith Bruce

Picture shows the curtain call at Friday’s Usher Hall concert (credit: RSNO)

Benedetti premiere

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The world premiere of a new concerto written by clarinettist and composer Mark Simpson for Nicola Benedetti will be free to view on Thursday April 22 on Marquee TV and for seven days thereafter. The first performance of the work will be given by the London Symphony Orchestra with its Principal Guest Conductor Gianandrea Noseda on the podium.

The LSO is one of four partner co-commissioners of the concerto, along with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Germany’s WDR Sinfonieorchester and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in the USA. The RSNO had been due to give the first Scottish performances on April 23 and 24 in Edinburgh and Glasgow as part of the season that was announced immediately  before the pandemic struck.

Benedetti is a featured soloist in the new digital season by the RSNO, playing concertos by Karol Szymanowski on April 16 and June 11, however the Scottish premiere of the Simpson concerto is now pencilled in for early in 2022. RSNO chief executive Alistair Mackie told VoxCarnyx that details were still to be confirmed, but a provisional date was being held in the soloist’s diary.

The concerto is of particular interest because Simpson and Benedetti are near-contemporaries whose early fame came through the bi-annual BBC Young Musician Competition. The violinist won at the Usher Hall in 2004, playing the Szymanowski’s Concerto No 1, and Simpson was the winner at the Sage, Gateshead, in 2006.

The decision by Mackie and the RSNO to postpone their performances raises interesting questions about concert scheduling as a result of the move to online streaming, and ones which may persist beyond the health emergency if orchestras build on the experience of making work available that way, as seems likely.

Previously, it would have been perfectly acceptable for a new work to be heard in front of a live audience in London, and then repeated for concert-goers in Edinburgh and Glasgow the same week. However, the RSNO felt that it could not broadcast its performance when the LSO’s would still be available to watch, especially, perhaps, as the London orchestra’s premiere is initially free to view, while the RSNO’s would have been part of a subscription season. Orchestral managements have yet another variable to take into account as they look to a future beyond Covid-19.

The LSO’s chief executive, Kathryn McDowell, has announced the Chief Conductor who will succeed Sir Simon Rattle. Another musical knight, Sir Antonio Pappano, will move from his current position at the Royal Opera House, where his contract ends in July 2024. Pappano will be styled Chief Conductor Designate at the LSO from September 2023 and take up the post a year later.

Keith Bruce