Robert Simpson(1921-1997)

[Mirror Image]

Wondering if I should reacquire 6-7... hmmm...

...off to YT...

Why didn't you just buy the whole box set when it came out?

[calyptorhynchus]

Why didn't you just buy the whole box set when it came out?

If you are a devotee of a composer like Simpson you buy each symphony disk as it comes out paying full price. You don't wait 15 years in case they put out a half price box set.

[Mirror Image]

If you are a devotee of a composer like Simpson you buy each symphony disk as it comes out paying full price. You don't wait 15 years in case they put out a half price box set.

I guess I'm not a devotee then. But I have only been seriously listening to classical music for six years.

[snyprrr]

If you are a devotee of a composer like Simpson you buy each symphony disk as it comes out paying full price. You don't wait 15 years in case they put out a half price box set.

... and then you sell them all, and years later contemplate buying them all again... oy...

[Klaze]

Talking about boxes, how about the string quartets...? I'm curious about them, but acquiring them all seems to be a costly affair...

[snyprrr]

Talking about boxes, how about the string quartets...? I'm curious about them, but acquiring them all seems to be a costly affair...

They are all mostly pretty tough nuts to crack. I'm just not really a fan here... always breaking the bounds of the medium,... I don't know, they were all a disappointment after the 9th Symphony,... I also have a hard time with Holmboe's SQs. I wanted something more "cosmic",... they're very thorny.

The 9th ("Haydn") would be the best place to start.

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

Talking about boxes, how about the string quartets...? I'm curious about them, but acquiring them all seems to be a costly affair...

I was disappointed with my first encounter with them (10, 11). Then I got the disc with nos. 3 and 6 and liked it a lot better. Since then I've gotten the famous "Haydn" quartet (#9), and the first "Razumovsky" (#4, coupled with #1). I like all of them a lot better than nos. 10-11. So a mixed big overall, but definitely some individual quartets worth seeking out.

[Klaze]

Thanks, will check out those first.

Ah yes, the Holmboe quartets, i have kept putting off buying that set as well, even tough I'm curious (for some reason they reside in the same corner of my brain as the Simpson's, even though I havent heard a note of either of the cycles).

[calyptorhynchus]

The Holmoe Quartets are wonderful, almost as good as the Simpson though perhaps a little less dissonant and forceful.



I guess I more or less grew up listening to the Simpson quartets (from the early 1990s when they began to emerge on disc), and they seem like the norm for C20 SQs, with everything else diverging from them, not them being divergent.

I can't see which quartets wouldn't immediately appeal to listeners, so my advice is plunge in anywhere, but expect profundity. This isn't decorative music.

[Klaze]

Wow, the first spin of the disc with SQs 1 and 4 and I'm really digging it !
Think I will start collecting more of this stuff.

[snyprrr]

Wow, the first spin of the disc with SQs 1 and 4 and I'm really digging it !
Think I will start collecting more of this stuff.

Then stick with 1-6 for now.

7-8 are quite dense, so, then, go to the "best" one, No.9. Those four discs should keep you going for a while. The later SQs continue Simpson's confrontational style into ever more astringent territory, and I just didn't feel the need. 1-3 are early, and Neilsonesque, though, with much steel. 4-6 are maybe the best bet, along with 9. I had 10-11 which was NOT what I wanted at the time,... and the later ones,...

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

Then stick with 1-6 for now.

7-8 are quite dense, so, then, go to the "best" one, No.9. Those four discs should keep you going for a while. The later SQs continue Simpson's confrontational style into ever more astringent territory, and I just didn't feel the need. 1-3 are early, and Neilsonesque, though, with much steel. 4-6 are maybe the best bet, along with 9. I had 10-11 which was NOT what I wanted at the time,... and the later ones,...

I think this is good advice. I started with 10/11, and was puzzled by my negative reaction, because I had liked the symphonies so much. I had much better luck with the earlier quartets.

No. 3 has a second mvt. which sounds oddly mid-European (like Bartok or Janacek), so go for it if you like that style.  4-6 are the "Razumovskys", so go for those if you like Beethoven. 9 is the famous palindromic Haydn one, so go for that if...you get the idea.

[calyptorhynchus]

I was listening to the Symphony No.11 just now after listening to lots of Holmboe. People have spoken about Simpson wanting to write a simpler symphony after 9 & 10 (hardly surprising) and have written of the influence of Sibelius 6, a great favourite of Simpson's). However, parts of 11 sound very like Holmboe to me, we know that Simpson thought very highly of his music, and I wonder if, in 1990-91 Simpson wasn't thinking of Holmboe, who, by that time was getting quite aged.

[Scion7]

Giving the Piano Sonata a spin on this rainy Tuesday night.  This would be impressive to witness in-concert - busy fingers!

[Androcles]

I have been listening to a lot of Robert Simpson's music lately; in particular I have been working my way through the 15 string quartets and the two string quintets. I am extremely impressed with these pieces. Each one perhaps takes four or five hearings to really get into.

He is a difficult composer to assess. I started listening to the symphonies, and was intrigued. Some of them are more viscerally powerful than anything else I have every heard - the 5th and 8th. The 9th feels like an enormous cosmic structure that unfolds before the listener. There is plenty in these works that I feel drawn back to from time to time. On the other hand, most of them use the orchestra rather counterintuitively. Surely an orchestra with all its instruments is to be used to create sound that interest the ear, rather than simply present an argument as Simpson wants to do. To my ears, Simpson's scoring is usually brass/woodwind heavy. There is not much that is human in these symphonies, it is true.

However, the great exception to the rule is the Symphony No. 11, which contains chamber-like scoring in places, and gives us perhaps a calmer, more human musical expression (although still cogently argued and powerful). Here is a piece, like the late Flute Concerto, which ends with flute and string quartet with no conductor, that is rather more intimate, and deserves performance.

The quartets, however, are different to the symphonies. They play to Simpson's strengths, of cogent argument and linear progression, while revealing a more human side. I love the 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th and 12th in particular. They contain the power of the symphonies (eg. 7th Quartet) without the jarring orchestration. There are far more moments of beauty (finale of 10th Quartet, slow variations in 9th Quartet). Basically - my question is - why are these quartets not being listened to? Is it because the genre is unpopular or the pieces are hard work, and that the composer doesn't particularly distinguish himself elsewhere? For my money these are up with the Bartok.

At the moment it looks like Simpson is about to depart from the catalogue and his music get forgotten, which would be a great shame. Even the symphonies that once drew some attention from lovers of British symphonies aren't being discussed, let alone performed.

[Turner]

.....

Also, Simpson's PC badly needs a modern recording. John Ogdon's recording of it was released years ago on the Carlton Classics label, but that disc is now well out of print.

Am considering putting that old CD of the Piano Concerto on my wish list ... I don´t see much about the piece in this thread; if anyone knows it, could you give a very short characterization? If it´s mainly neoclassical or divertimento-like, it might be of less importance to me ...

I am not very familiar with Simpson, own the Symphonies + Nielsen Variations box from Hyperion.

[vandermolen]

Simpson is one of those composers, like Norgard or Blomdahl whose first symphonies I really like and whose later, and more highly regarded, music I fail to appreciate - and I have no doubt that it is my failure. I recently listened to Symphony 9 and will play it again soon.

[Scion7]

Simpson is one of those composers, like Norgard or Blondahl whose first symphonies I really like and whose later, and more highly regarded, music I fail to appreciate - and I have no doubt that it is my failure.

Not necessarily - I consider his work inconsistent.  Some pieces I quite like - others, meh.

[calyptorhynchus]

To my ears, Simpson's scoring is usually brass/woodwind heavy.

On the other hand you could argue that classical, Romantic and C20 orchestral music is generally too string heavy.



I love the way that Simpson lets the brass roar and dominate (aided by the woodwind). IN my opinion he and Havergal Brian liberated the brass and ww for the first time in orchestral music. And HB went further and liberated the tuned percussion too (especially in his later symphonies)

The orchestra and orchestral sound should be allowed to evolve over time, I wish more composers would use cool instruments that aren't often heard for new sonorities: flugelhorns, cornets, saxophones, alto flute, bass oboe, piccolo oboe, contrabass flute, basset horn &c

[vandermolen]

Not necessarily - I consider his work inconsistent.  Some pieces I quite like - others, meh.

Thanks - apologies for misspelling Blomdahl.