LPO/Gardner review – Mark Simpson’s piano concerto leaves its audience panting

Royal festival hall, London
Pianist Tamara Stefanovich gave the world premiere of Mark Simpson’s fearless and uncompromising new concerto, with Edward Gardner and the London Philharmonic mostly keeping up

‘Restless and impassioned.” “Very fast.” “Explosive, with abandon!” Before a note of Mark Simpson’s new Piano Concerto has sounded, it’s clear from the movements that this is music with the volume dialled up: louder, faster, bigger, fiercer. And it’s no idle promise. We open in a landslide of sound and barely draw breath for half an hour. This is a concerto that leaves the audience panting – let alone the soloist.

Simpson’s music is larger than life. The British composer and clarinettist (who famously won both BBC Young Musician and BBC Young Composer of the Year back in 2006, aged just 17) plays with big forces and sounds at their extremes – whether that’s a barrage of percussion or extremes of register – and is rarely far from the kinetic twitch of nervous energy.