The prodigiously talented Mark Simpson is the only person to have won both the BBC Young Musician and BBC Young Composer of the Year awards. Tonight, both of Simpson’s parallel musical lives are on show, as the BBC Philharmonic’s Composer in Association gives the world premiere of his own Clarinet Concerto.
Tonight’s other soloist, leading British soprano Elizabeth Watts, is on double duty: tackling three Mozart arias to open the programme, then returning to end the season with Mahler’s soulful but uplifting Fourth Symphony.