Mark Simpson: The Immortal is Liverpool residency highlight
The focus on Mark Simpson’s music in Liverpool this season culminates in a performance of his acclaimed oratorio The Immortal, exploring paranormal events in Victorian times. The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra is joined on 26 March by Exaudi and baritone Rory Musgrave conducted by Daniela Candillari.
This season has marked Mark Simpson’s return to his home city of Liverpool with an extensive five-concert Artist in Residence series by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, featuring Simpson both as composer and clarinet soloist. The autumn brought the UK premiere of his recent viola concerto for Timothy Ridout, Hold Your Heart in Your Teeth, and last month saw Simpson leading outreach projects, including workshops as part of the RLPO Learning Creative Residencies as well as composition and careers sessions with secondary school students.
The highlight of the Liverpool residency promises to be Simpson’s oratorio The Immortal on 26 March. This large-scale score for baritone, small chorus and orchestra was described at its world premiere in 2015 as “a blazingly original oratorio” (The Guardian) and as “the most thrilling new choral work I have heard in years” (The Times). Melanie Challenger’s text explores paranormal events in the late Victorian era when mediums in different countries began writing down the same messages from a deceased psychical researcher who was harbouring a dark secret.
For the performance at Philharmonic Hall, Rory Musgrave is baritone soloist, Exaudi provides the choral voices from the beyond, and the RLPO is conducted by Daniela Candillari. A post-concert Question Time in the Music Room follows the performance, with Mark Simpson, Daniela Candillari and librettist Melanie Challenger.
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“If the purpose of art is to pose existential questions, then the piece is concerned with what might be the most fundamental question of all: is anybody there? The paranormal effects Simpson conjures from the expansive forces are genuinely eerie. [The baritone solo] is buffeted through the choral maelstrom like a sceptical anti-Gerontius, who, instead of being eased towards purgatory by a team of spiritual assistants, sends panicked, fragmentary transmissions indicating terror at the lack of a welcoming committee."
The Guardian
"Challenger’s stream-of-consciousness libretto weaves together the anguished ‘automated’ ramblings supposedly dictated posthumously by Myers with elliptical details of this tragic affair. However, Simpson’s multi-layered, swirling score transcends these specifics to evoke the philosophical turmoil of humanity in general as we cling to such concepts as love, soul and immortality when the cold materialism of modern science suggests that such things are tricks of the sentimental mind."
The Times
Two further concerts in the Liverpool residency follow in coming months. Simpson appears on 29 April as soloist in John Adams’s virtuosic and heartfelt clarinet concerto Gnarly Buttons, in a concert at the Tung Auditorium by the RLPO’s contemporary music group Ensemble 10:10, conducted by George Jackson. To close the series on 11 May, Simpson plays his Lov(escape) and Echoes and Embers in a chamber recital with pianist Ian Buckle combining clarinet classics with contemporary works. Simpson describes how, “at this relaxed evening with me in the Music Room, I’ll be talking about growing up in Liverpool and how vital it was for my musical development, and performing the music by my former composition teachers that brought me along the way”.
The past year has brought the highly successful world premiere at the BBC Proms of Simpson’s ZEBRA for electric guitar and orchestra, written for soloist Sean Shibe who gives a further performance at the Casa da Música in Porto on 29 May. The concerto’s subtitle 2-3-74: The Divine Invasion of Philip K. Dick refers to the visions experienced by the American science fiction author and this mystical revelation formed the impetus for Simpson’s score. The composer has recently completed a new piano concerto for Víkingur Ólafsson to be premiered in the 2026/27 season.
> Further information on Work: The Immortal
Photo: Matthew Johnson