Simpson, Robert (1921-1997)

[ahinton]

Wow! Who needs a Robert Simpson Society when there is Jayne Lee Wilson?!...

[Serial_Apologist]

Thanks, Jayne, for the mention of the Simpson biog., which looks good from a perspective wider strictly speaking than its subject, looking at BBC music policy in the 1950s and 60s.

[Maclintick]

Thanks, Jayne, for the mention of the Simpson biog., which looks good from a perspective wider strictly speaking than its subject, looking at BBC music policy in the 1950s and 60s.

Seconded, Jayne. Biog just ordered -- tho' not from tax-avoiding megacorp ! I have the Hyperion set of symphonies & will reacquaint with more Simpsoniana in time...

[Roslynmuse]

There also was once available a slim Lengnick volume edited by Robert Matthew-Walker on the Simpson Symphonies. It seems to be nla although there are some second-hand copies at a price. I'll have to dig mine out and find out whether it adds to the information on the Hyperion discs. Also came across Robert Simpson -- Composer: Essays, Interviews, Recollections: 74 (Studien Und Materialien Zur Musikwissenschaft) edited Jurgen Schaarwachter - another pricey second-hand only volume. John Pickard's PhD thesis on the symphonies does not appear to be online, unfortunately.

[jayne lee wilson]

There also was once available a slim Lengnick volume edited by Robert Matthew-Walker on the Simpson Symphonies. It seems to be nla although there are some second-hand copies at a price. I'll have to dig mine out and find out whether it adds to the information on the Hyperion discs. Also came across Robert Simpson -- Composer: Essays, Interviews, Recollections: 74 (Studien Und Materialien Zur Musikwissenschaft) edited Jurgen Schaarwachter - another pricey second-hand only volume. John Pickard's PhD thesis on the symphonies does not appear to be online, unfortunately.

Interested if you would recommend the Lengnick volume... please would you comment later? Thanks...
Otherwise - well, you know, just listen and keep listening - that's the only way you get anywhere with great & challenging music. .....don't use the reading as a displacement activity!

Incidentally, I just wrote to Hyperion to see if they might offer the String Quartets (still expensive separate issues) as a boxset this year... will report any response here...

Just started on Symphony No.10 (the "Hammerklavierisch" )...so different to my dim and distant recall... in the tradition of Holmboe as much as Nielsen but startlingly original and absolutely of itself ....
I'm open to it now...... I may be some time....

[jayne lee wilson]

So I gambled on the Lengnick Paperback and it is very useful, similar to the Hyperion notes but (with the exception of No.2) usually in far greater and lengthier detailed descriptions of each symphony (from Matthew Taylor, John Pickard, Cooke, Ottaway, Pike and Simpson himself etc); but without the technical harmonic analysis in the Hyperion notes.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1873343043/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Sad there's little interest here in the centenary but - if anyone notices any Robert Simpson events or releases please could they post news here? Thanks. Looked around R3 but there seems nowhere to write to about advance programming except individual programs themselves.. maybe CotW will do it.

Hyperion never replied to my query re. boxed set of the Quartets, which would cost well over £100 to buy separately. And with no streaming available.... .
Hyperion really should think about their business model.

If anyone wanted to, well, start somewhere, I would always say the Symphonies 2&4 as definitely the best way in...Simpson at his most inventive & characteristic, warm, witty, powerful.... full of profound slow movements, stunning sonic imagination and mystery. And terrific finales! That of No.4** must be one of the all-time-great-all-brass-blazing symphonic endings! "Unpredictable inevitability" at its best.

**(No.4 has a 13' scherzo - Part one is a fully-developed sonata form, very unusual for Simpson - which is an exhilarating, thrillingly virtuosic paraphrase of the LvB 9th scherzo (the Simpson trio is based on a quote from Haydn 76, which retains its nonchalance as the scherzo tries to blow it away...). And, far beyond a "worthy successor" to the Beethoven, it doesn't suffer from the comparison at all...!)

[Richard Barrett]

Finally I got all the way through Simpson't 9th Quartet. I was very impressed at the ingenuity of it, within the restrictions he set up for himself, but in the end it sort of reminded me of someone doing acrobatics in a straitjacket. I think I shall move on to one of the symphonies next. Simpson admirers might be interested in Alex Ross's blog post on the occasion of the centenary https://www.therestisnoise.com/2021/...on-at-100.html and the 2015 New Yorker article it links to.

[jayne lee wilson]

I enjoyed Ross's essay on the 20thC symphony.... an eagle's eye view, but he hasn't quite got the measure of Panufnik, whose symphonic masterpiece is ( for those that know them) very clearly the fiendishly complex yet stunningly intense 5th (not the pop-classic often name-dropped show-stopping 3rd, the Sacra) with the 6th as a fascinating aftershock, expending all the remaining nervous energy and passion the 5th left in its trail......

I liked the focus on the Simpson 7th, with Simpson's idea of all of us listening alone, not in a hall somewhere, more apposite than ever...... but of course, every Simpson Symphony compels the attention, each in a different way...

[Ein Heldenleben]

..is Composer Of The Week this week. If a repeat - great. If a first outing -about time!

[Bryn]

..is Composer Of The Week this week. If a repeat - great. If a first outing -about time!

Looks to be new.

[Serial_Apologist]

I've started a thread of its own.