Mark Simpson: Geysir; W.A. Mozart: Gran Partita K.361 (2020)

The neoclassic impulse in music has often taken the Baroque as a point of departure. Mozart is a less common source, although he certainly served as inspiration for Prokofiev and others. The chief attraction of this release by clarinetist Mark Simpson is Geysir, a composition by Simpson himself that was commissioned by the Britten Sinfonia as a companion piece to a performance of Mozart's Serenade in B flat major, K. 361 ("Gran Partita"). The title means "geyser" in Icelandic, and Simpson manages the trick of combining ... Read More

The neoclassic impulse in music has often taken the Baroque as a point of departure. Mozart is a less common source, although he certainly served as inspiration for Prokofiev and others. The chief attraction of this release by clarinetist Mark Simpson is Geysir, a composition by Simpson himself that was commissioned by the Britten Sinfonia as a companion piece to a performance of Mozart's Serenade in B flat major, K. 361 ("Gran Partita"). The title means "geyser" in Icelandic, and Simpson manages the trick of combining abstract procedures with an evocative programmatic image; a "bubbling" clarinet passage from the sixth-movement set of variations in the Mozart work becomes an important structural feature, combined with a static homophonic chord from the beginning of the work. There are deeper references as well. The performance of the Gran Partita itself is of the larger, symphonic type. There are more purely elegant readings, but the vigorous conclusion here is quite appealing. In general, this is a... Read Less

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2020, Orchid Classics UPC: 5060189561506 CD See All from $20.93