Music Review: RLPO / Paul Daniel with Choir, Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool

Oct 13 2008 by Glyn Mon Hughes Liverpool Daily Post

IN HER preamble to the latest Philharmonic programme, Sue Harrison, the outgoing interim chief executive of the Phil, described Mark Simpson as a Liverpool wunderkind.

That’s certainly an accurate description as Simpson is a nationally recognised clarinettist and is a composer of some distinction – and he’s barely out of his teens.

A Mirror Fragment Snares Blood Hues was receiving its world premiere by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra under Paul Daniel. It is a tone-poem based on the poem by Melanie Challenger. In many ways it is an uneasy piece and quite unrelenting. While Simpson uses many intriguing melodies and develops these extensively in the course of just seven minutes or so, it’s his fascinating use of the orchestra which makes this piece work so well.

Many instruments are pushed to the extremes of their ranges, and an extensive use of tuned percussion added colour to what was quite sombre subject matter.

It’s not often audiences in Liverpool get to hear the music of Miklos Rozsa, who spent much of his composing career creating scores for Hollywood. His Viola Concerto is a big work, opening with a frantic moderato assai which Daniel and soloist Lawrence Power brought to a beautiful and quite sedate ending. Again, the allegro giocoso was full of life and, in many ways, quite impertinent.

The drama continued with Walton’s choral work Belshazzar’s Feast. This was a riotous performance where Daniel brought his long experience of directing the music at English National Opera to bear. It didn’t hold back from packing the punch Walton evidently wanted.