Mark Simpson

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 inspired by the rich opening chord of Mozart’s ‘Gran Partita’, and by its bubbling clarinet writing, which develop into what Simpson describes as a “flurry of colour and harmonic shifts”.

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 inspired by the rich opening chord of Mozart’s ‘Gran Partita’, and by its bubbling clarinet writing, which develop into what Simpson describes as a “flurry of colour and harmonic shifts”.

Alchymia is a 2021 quintet for basset clarinet and strings by Thomas Adès composed for Mark Simpson and Quatuor Diotima. At its premiere it was Adès’ most substantial new chamber work in over a decade, following The Four Quarters (2010). Its title – the Latin word for alchemy, from the Arabic kīmiyā – evokes two complementary postures: speculative, mystical capriciousness and experimental precision.

Storytelling and making – craft and narrative, and the ways in which they are both enabled and complicated by the presence of music – lie at the heart of Matthew Kaner’s compositional world, as revealed on this debut album devoted to his work.