Three years ago the BBC Philharmonic gave the first performance of Mark Simpson’s The Immortal, a 40-minute choral work on the subject of spiritualism, which marked Simpson out as one of the most exciting young talents in British music today. Since then he has become the orchestra’s composer in association, in a three-year tenure during which he will write three substantial works. Two of those scores are going to be concertos, and the first of them, for cello, was premiered by Leonard Elschenbroich, with Clemens Schuldt conducting.
Simpson has known Elschenbroich since the two were members of the BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists scheme between 2012 and 2014, and the composition of the concerto was a close collaboration between them. It certainly exploits the cellist’s sometimes breathtaking virtuosity, but also relies heavily upon his ability to spin long, achingly expressive melodic lines.
Formally the piece is straightforward enough. It plays continuously but clearly falls into a fast-slow-fast scheme, which pivots about the anguished lament that the cello sings over a web of divided strings at its centre, and is related to a section of The Immortal, says the composer. It is both immediately compelling and mysterious at the same time, for Simpson has the precious knack of making relatively conventional gestures seem totally original and he uses a fundamentally tonal language in an utterly distinctive, never derivative way, so that nothing is ever quite what it seems.
The BBC Philharmonic is currently looking to replace Juanjo Mena, who steps down as chief conductor this summer. Schuldt, here making his debut at Bridgewater Hall, will have done his chances of being appointed no harm at all with this concert. Before bringing all the necessary clarity and verve to Simpson’s busy score, he had opened with a carefully paced account of Richard Strauss’s tone poem Death and Transfiguration, which he built to a thunderous climax. He ended with Shostakovich’s astonishingly precocious First Symphony. Perhaps at times Schuldt pushed the symphony a bit too hard in the direction of later Shostakovich, rather than relishing its brittle neoclassical edge, but the orchestral brilliance of his performance was undeniable.
•Broadcast on Radio 3 on 2 May.
