# Opinions of Robert Simpson?



## DavidMahler (Dec 28, 2009)

Listening to his symphonies at the moment. Any opinions?


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## hespdelk (Mar 19, 2011)

I gave a number of his symphonies and string quartets a good run a few years ago to try and understand this composer. I'd say he is a major figure of the 20th century in these forms, his music is very finely wrought.. though I also have to say that while I admired the works on an intellectual level, I did not come to love them beyond that... I found his style fairly alienating. The work I came closest to "liking" was his 9th symphony, but even here it did not go past appreciation for the intellectual depth of what he was doing..

That was my experience, and its been a while. 
How have you found these works? Is this your first hearing of Simpson?


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## Jeremy Marchant (Mar 11, 2010)

I discovered Simpson through his excellent two books on Bruckner and Nielsen, and contributions to _The symphony_.

I suggest symphonies 3 and 6, the former with a very long composed accelerando as the second of its two movements, thereby telescoping slow movement, scherzo and finale into one piece.

One thing that characterises Simpson's composing is his unusual ability to write real fast music and music with energy (a la Beethoven). To me, there's a lot of power and emotion in his music: it may not be so overt as in Tchaikovsky, but none the worse for that.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

I have his symphonies and I think they are great. Ya they can be kind of intellectual sounding I guess, but that kind of thing is fun for me anyway to try to figure out what is going on in the piece. I feel like 3, 5, or 7 all have the most immediate dramatic impact on someone not use to his symphonies.


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

Record label Hyperion appears to be the only source of his symphonies. Are you guys referring to these recordings?


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

HarpsichordConcerto said:


> Record label Hyperion appears to be the only source of his symphonies. Are you guys referring to these recordings?


yes, thats the one Im referring to anyway.


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## Taneyev (Jan 19, 2009)

Have all his string quartets. IMO, the most important chamber corpus from a British composer in the past century.


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## Jeremy Marchant (Mar 11, 2010)

HarpsichordConcerto said:


> Record label Hyperion appears to be the only source of his symphonies. Are you guys referring to these recordings?


Yes. There is also an earlier recording of 3 by LSO/Jascha Horenstein which is very good. I grew up with the vinyl version and for many years it was the only orchestral Simpson available on record. Now on the NMC label.


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## Delicious Manager (Jul 16, 2008)

In my opinion, Robert Simpson is arguably the finest symphonist of the second half of the 20th century. There are too many masterpieces to choose from, but, for me, the 5th and 9th are towering examples of truly great symphonic writing. Simpson understood (and exploited) organic, symphonic structures and how to handle them. Pure genius.

Although there is only one recording of most of them, it is hard to imagine better advocacy that Vernon Handley's on Hyperion.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Hyperion deserve a 24-carat big up here - if not for them then this and similar threads probably wouldn't be happening! I have his symphonies and can only echo the positive comments from previous posts - it's probably my favourite 20th century cycle after that of Shostakovich. I would love to see the chamber works similarly boxed up - as it is I only have two discs as Hyperion's price range exceeds my admittedly parsimonious expenditure policy. I learned from a source close to Hyperion at the time that apparently a few more Simpson chamber works were scheduled to be recorded by the label as the final chapter of a complete overview but sadly it failed to happen - I have no idea why unless it was something to do with Simpson's death and attendant copyright/publishing issues.


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