ALCHYMIA Mark Simpson & Quatuor Diotima

• Thomas Adès (b. 1971):
• 1Adès: I. A Sea-Change (...those are pearls...)05:08
• 2Adès: II. The Woods So Wild03:10
• 3Adès: III. Lachrymae06:31
• 4Adès: IV. Divisions on a Lute-song: Wedekind’s Round08:40
• Total Runtime23:29

Info for ALCHYMIA

‘Art has no aim… art stands above life penetrates the essence of the universe’. So declared the Young Poland movement, of which a young Karol Szymanowski was a founding member of its musical chapter. Szymanowski, who was born into an affluent family who had settled in the heart of what is now Ukraine after Polish partition, travelled widely. His musical language, particularly in his early work, reflects this journeying, bearing influences of the neoromanticism of Wagner and Strauss and the impressionism of Debussy and Ravel.

However, following a return to Warsaw in the wake of revolution and independence, and heightened Polish nationalism, he increasingly looked towards Poland’s folk traditions developing, a distinctive musical vocabulary. The Second String quartet, composed in 1927, belongs to this period and overlays folk theme and traditional classical forms of sonata form, theme and variations, and fugue. The opening movement flows rhapsodically in lyric detachment, with brief interrupts and postscripted with something akin to a choral ‘Amen’. The second and third movements fold in folk motifs from southern Poland, with strong rhythms and wild outbursts punctuating their classical forms.

Mark Simpson, clarinet
Quatuor Diotima:
YunPeng Zhao, violin
Léo Marillier, violin
Franck Chevalier, viola
Pierre Morlet, violoncello

Mark Simpson
One of the most intriguing artists on today’s British music scene, Liverpool-born clarinettist and composer Mark Simpson’s musical life is a symbiosis of performance on the concert platform. Highlights include Mark performing premieres of Alchymia, a new clarinet quintet by Thomas Adès dedicated to Mark and the Quatuor Diotima to be released in 2024; his USA debut at the La Jolla Chamber Music Festival; and performances of his own works. Forthcoming commissions include a choral work for the Bachchor Salzburg, and concerto works for violist Tim Ridout and guitarist Sean Shibe. 2023 saw several German premieres – including Pleasure at the Theater Erfurt and his orchestral work Israfel with Deutsche Symphonie Orchester Berlin. Mark continues his partnerships with Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Jean-Guihen Queyras in performances of music by Helmut Lachenmann at the Wien Moderne Festival and Luxembourg Philharmonie. Recent concerto highlights include the world premiere of his Clarinet Concerto with the BBC Philharmonic and Lindberg’s Clarinet Concerto at the BBC Proms. He was one of the 2022 Aldeburgh Festival’s artists in residence. Mark’s recording of his own Geysir and Mozart’s Gran Partita (Orchid Classics) won a Presto Recording of the Year award and was shortlisted for the 2021 Gramophone Awards. Mark was recipient of the Royal Philharmonic Society Composition Award in 2010, and the first ever winner of both the BBC Young Musician of the Year and BBC Proms/Guardian Young Composer of the Year in 2006. His oratorio The Immortal received the South Bank Sky Arts Award for Classical Music in 2019. Quatuor Diotima

The Quatuor Diotima
is one of the most in-demand chamber ensembles in the world today; it was formed in 1996 by graduates of the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris. The quartet’s name evokes a double musical significance: Diotima is at once an allegory of German romanticism – Friederich Hölderlin gives the name to the love of his life in his novel Hyperion – and a rallying cry for the music of our time, brandished by Luigi Nono in his composition Fragmente-Stille, an Diotima. The Quatuor Diotima has worked in close collaboration with several of the greatest composers of the late 20th century, notably Pierre Boulez and Helmut Lachenmann. The quartet regularly commissions new works from the most brilliant composers of our time. Reflected in the mirror of today’s music, the quartet projects a new light onto the masterpieces of the 19th and 20th centuries and the Second Viennese School. It has dedicated itself to contemporary music, without, however, allowing itself to be limited by it. Quatuor Diotima performs regularly in the world’s most prestigious concert halls and concert series. This season will see concerts at the Philharmonie de Paris, Berlin Philharmonie, Cologne Philharmonie, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Konserthuset Stockholm, Círculo de Cámara Madrid, Lugano Musica, Granada Festival and Vienna Konzerthaus.

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