Pleasure; H&N Sat 11/6/16

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Tomorrow night's Hear & Now includes a performance of 27-year-old composer/clarinettist Mark Simpson's one-act Chamber opera, Pleasure. Recorded in the Howard Assembly rooms at the Grand Theatre & Opera House, Leeds, the work is a joint commission from Opera North, Aldeburgh, and the Royal Opera House:

https://www.operanorth.co.uk/news/pleasure-new-opera-by-young-liverpool-born-composer-mark-simpson-to-premiere-in-2016

Much praised both as a Clarinettist (BBC Young Musician of the Year AND BBC Young Composer of the Year 2006) there are examples of Mark Simpson's compositions on youTube, including the (Last Night of the) Proms Commission from 2012:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8idDI83my8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIGr_3XpTh8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABSLiMuwZY0

... some of which, from a new CD devoted to his Music, are being used to fill in the two-hour time slot of the programme.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07f6jvd

[jean]

Reminds me that I failed to post a report here after I'd seen it.

I was not at all gripped by the characters or the plot. Perhaps as a result, I found myself listening especially to the instrumentation and I did enjoy the music without much prior knowledge of his work.

Marvelled at Lesley Garrett's transformation.

Review of the Liverpool performance here, by someone who attends more contemporary music concerts than I do.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Thanks for that, jean - and the link, too.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Well - I was a lot more impressed by the excerpts from M Simpson's new portrait CD than by the opera. A modest and not unpleasant talent was shown in those chamber pieces; but the opera was incurably hampered by a cack-handed libretto - over-wordy, and more like a GCSE creative writing attempt to write a piece in the style of a soap opera. The composer should have cut most of it out, or rejected it completely - but that's probably not an option given the corporate nature of the commission; so, instead, he faithfully set every syllable, providing note after note that rarely rose above the tepid. Clichéd melismas on "beautiful", "milkpunch or whisky"-type rattlings on "he looks just like his father" - a waste of time (not least the composer's), I thought.


Should anyone wish to purchase the portrait CD, further details here:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mark-Simpson-Night-Mercury-Quartet/dp/B01E08KE1C