Over-scored concerto from young musicians

BBC Philharmonic Bridgewater Hall, Manchester ★★★★★

In his role as the BBC Philharmonic’s composer in association, Mark Simpson has kicked off with a frantically energetic three-movement Cello Concerto for his friend and one-time fellow BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist, Leonard Elschenbroich.

The piece starts with eruptive, lavishly-scored orchestral ascents and high-flying, passionate cello responses, heroically delivered by Elschenbroich, none of which would be out of place in a Hollywood filmscore. It continues with rhythmical pulsations underpinned by bongos and congas and punctuated by Stravinskian chordal shards. Rich harmonic substrata come to the surface especially in the later stages. As a seasoned, high-level performer himself – a BBC Young Musician winner as a clarinettist in 2006 – Simpson strives for ecstatic communication, on the way relishing rhetoric, and on occasion deliberately courting catastrophe.

Nothing wrong with any of that. The main problem is that the concerto is wildly over-scored. Much of the doubling and pretty much the entire orchestral piano part could be redpenned, along with a good deal of the solo writing. As it stands, the general sound and fury signify a good less than they might, while the promised tutti interludes are too short and too undifferentiated to make much impact. Even the central, initially slow movement soon suffers from hyperactivity.

Conductor Clemens Schuldt is only a few years older than Simpson, and he too is an enthusiastic communicator with a lot to learn.

The inadvertent theme was turning out to be young musicians who should know better (not counting the wholly innocent Elschenbroich). Except that when he composed his First Symphony, the teenage Shostakovich was younger and did know better. This performance, then, enjoyed mixed fortunes.