"Canzoni et Ricercari" was commissioned by the Royal Philharmonic Society for the 2021 Cheltenham Music Festival, and is scored for onstage string ensemble of 9 players and 3 offstage violins. The fractious relationship between these two groups is at the heart of the piece. There are two movements of roughly equal length, each building to a climax in a different way, and each involving canons or ricercars on some level, hence the Frescobaldi-inspired title. The atmosphere is sometimes solemn, sometimes playful, and sometimes a bit of both.

Recorded live by the 12 Ensemble in Gloucester Cathedral on 9th July 2021 as part of the Cheltenham Music Festival.

Canzoni et ricercari (for 12 string players)

For solo violin, played by Amalia Young and recorded in New College Chapel, Oxford on 13/12/2021

Originally titled 'A'arhiyib'

Composed by Marcello Palazzo

Image: Amalia Young

Sonata (i)

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, cond. Ryan Wigglesworth

[excerpt from] Symphonic Message in memory of L. R.

Lakes, Mists, Bats, Daggers, And Fountains for String Quartet (2023) Mvmt I

Live recording, performed by Solem Quartet at the Wigmore Hall, London, 25th November 2023

Lakes, Mists, Bats, Daggers, And Fountains - Mvmt I

Geysir was a commission for the Britten Sinfonia. It was imagined as a partner to Mozart’s Serenade in B flat (K.361), the ‘Gran Partita’, drawing on the same instrumental forces: pairs of oboes, clarinets, basset horns, bassoons, four horns, and double bass.

Geysir’s relationship to Mozart goes beyond programming convenience. Geysir – the Icelandic word for geyser, from the Old Norse geysa, ‘to gush’ – is the surface emanation of two ideas in the Serenade. The first is the resplendent B flat major chord that opens the ‘Gran Partita’: fulsome homophonic textures, making extravagant and atmospheric use of warm clarinets, basset horns, bassoons, and french horns, are key to the design of Simpson’s piece – though Geysir extends the spread and range of these chords to generate a sound world very much its own.

The second compositional seed comes from an especially numinous moment in Mozart: variation five of the Serenade’s sixth movement. A quartet of clarinets plays various iterations of a spread B flat major chord, pianissimo, with horns underneath; above this an oboe sings a plaintive and lightly-ornamented melody. These murmuring, overlapping figures are where Simpson finds the ‘bubbling’ clarinets at the outset of Geysir, and they shape its further melodic impulses. Texture itself is an idée fixe in Geysir, summoning a musical landscape that is organic, intuitive, even atavistic.

The title’s volcanic logic manifests in different ways. Its textural organisation combines a pulsing underlay of lugubrious French and basset horns, thickened by oozing bassoons and double bass, with lyrical eruptions from pairs of clarinets and oboes. The denser lower registers of the piece slacken and quicken across uneven syncopated rhythms like flows of magma or shifting tectonic plates, supplying energy for outbursts from clarinets and oboes above, as if a superheated column of steam and ash has breached the surface of the musical crust.

This is evident in the most intensely pressurised climax. The accompanying lower instruments pulse faster and surge upwards into loud blocks of sound that cover the ensemble’s entire range, cracking open to allow a screaming oboe through, like an old-fashioned kettle at a furious boil; the work’s tremors gradually subside and the lower instruments cool to a more dormant state, the piece ending more or less as it began. Simpson’s instrumental ensemble itself represents another canny link between title and timbre. Clarinets, oboes, and horns have a similar mechanism to volcanic eruptions themselves, as pressurised air is forced through narrow pathways to expel sound, breath, and moisture, in ways that can be explosive, spectacular, sinuous, or languid.

© Benjamin Poore, 2020

Geysir

Octet for strings. Commissioned by Liza Ferschtman. Performed by Liza Ferschtman, Esther Hoppe, Ayako Ito Tanaka, Benjamin Gilmore, Jennifer Stumm, Tomoko Akasaka, Giovanni Gnocchi and István Várdai. Performance in Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ, Amsterdam. (23-03-’17)

Octet

Judit VARGA Pendulum 
Live 23. June 2019, Hamburg Elbphilharmonie
Aurel Dawidiuk - piano

Winner of the TONALi17 composition prize
Buy the score at Edition Sikorski
www.sikorski.de

Judit VARGA: Pendulum

An Arrangement of a hymn tune composed by Bahram Dehqani-Tafti
All tracks recorded and written by Gabriel Francis-Dehqani

Bahram's Hymn

An Arrangement of a hymn tune composed by Bahram Dehqani-Tafti (edit)

Edited by Josh Curtis

Bahram's Hymn (edit)

(WE'VE GOT) HONEY LOVE

written for EXAUDI as part of my Masters at GSMD

recorded by EXAUDI with James Weeks 06.10.20

(WE'VE GOT) HONEY LOVE

COMPOSER | CONDUCTOR 
LSO Helen Hamlyn Panufnik Composer 2025/26
Britten Pears Young Artist (Composition) 2022/23
Royal Academy of Music PhD 2025-
University of Oxford MPhil Composition (2021-23) - Distinction
Durham University BA Music (2018-21) - First Class Honours

Marcello Palazzo is a composer and conductor, praised by Julian Anderson as "one of the brightest young talents on the musical scene." He has been commissioned by prestigious institutions such as the Tête-À-Tête Opera Festival, Vienna Opera Festival, and twice by Britten Pears Arts. He has also been commissioned by renowned performers such as the Castalian Quartet, Sir Thomas Allen and twice by the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra. He has conducted opera, orchestras and choirs across the UK and Europe, including in Hungary and Austria, at venues such as the Musikverein, The Sheldonian Theatre and the Glasshouse Centre in Newcastle. 

Marcello’s works have been widely performed, with collaborations involving CHROMA Ensemble, EXAUDI, and the BBC Singers. As a Britten Pears Young Artist (2022/23), Marcello's music has twice been premiered at the Aldeburgh Festival. His first opera, Mount Herzog, was commissioned by the Tête-À-Tête Opera Festival, and was the best-selling show of the 2024 season.

Marcello has been mentored by renowned composers such as Mark-Anthony Turnage, Julian Anderson, Bent Sørensen, Judith Weir, Colin Matthews, Brett Dean, Gary Carpenter, and Christian Mason.

Sonata (i)

Marcello Palazzo

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