Romance from Tchaikovsky to the present day

Liza Ferschtman solos in Mark Simpson's Violin Concerto. A new but romantic equivalent of Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony.

Joy and fate in Tchaikovsky's Fourth
For Tchaikovsky, 1877 was a year of euphoria and death wish. It began radiantly with the promise of an annual stipend of 6,000 rubles (ten times modal) by the wealthy widow Nadezhda von Meck, followed in the summer by an impulsive marriage that after a few days nearly resulted in suicide. But it was also the year in which, despite everything, he created the most beautiful pages of his opera Yevgeny Onegin and the Fourth Symphony. A symphony that begins and ends with the menacing fanfares of doom, but in the scherzo imitates the carefree joy of a balalaika orchestra.

Liza Ferschtman in modern-romantic violin concerto
That same carefree joy is found in Mark Simpson's (*1988) Violin Concerto, which ends in a wild tarantella - Carmen through a particle accelerator. Simpson is the latest addition to the list of British composers who were remarkably creative even in their teens: Britten, Knussen, Benjamin and Adès. His Violin Concerto is a full-blooded twenty-first-century romantic work that has its Dutch premiere here.