Robert Simpson - Horn Trio; Horn Quartet (Richard Watkins; etc.)

Information

Composer: Robert Simpson

• (01) Trio for horn, violin and piano
• (04) Quartet for horn, violin, cello and piano

Richard Watkins, horn

Pauline Lowbury, violin

Caroline Dearnley, cello

Christopher Green-Armytage, piano

Date: 1994

Label: Hyperion

https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dc.asp?dc=D_CDA66695

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Review

Nirvana for composers and performers alike is a state where music unfolds of its own accord, without apparent conscious effort—and not many composers could claim to have reached that enviable condition more consistently than Robert Simpson. Not that will-power and effort are absent from his music—when the situation demands, no one directs the flow more determinedly than he does. But often the entire course of the work seems to be latent in its very first notes, only needing him to open a window and let it flood in.

Both the Horn Quartet of 1976 and the Trio of 1984 (just before the Gramophone Award-winning Ninth Symphony 12/88) make their mark on first hearing. That may be just my acclimatization over the years; or it may be that the performances are exceptionally fine (they certainly seemed so to me). But I would rather put it down to enthralling qualities in the pieces themselves. What it is not down to is any special idiomatic treatment of the horn—if anything that side of things is kept too rigorously in check. But the sense of power in reserve, of a satisfying fluidity of texture, of tiny ideas snowballing with irresistible inevitability, of frowns easing into poetry, all these things proclaim a true kinship with late Beethoven, long before the Quartet's final variation movement openly reveals its debt to Beethoven's last piano sonata.

Top-flight recordings from Hyperion here. I shouldn't like to put their Simpson CDs (some 15 to date) into a strict order of recommendation; but if pushed, I would have to place this one near the top.

-- Gramophone

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Robert Simpson (2 March 1921 – 21 November 1997) was an English composer and long-serving BBC producer and broadcaster. He studied composition under Herbert Howells. Simpson is best known for his orchestral and chamber music, and for his writings on the music of Beethoven, Bruckner, Nielsen and Sibelius. He wrote 11 symphonies as well as concertos for violin, piano, flute and cello. His extensive output of chamber music comprised 15 string quartets, 2 string quintets, a clarinet quintet, piano trio, clarinet trio, horn trio and violin sonata. The Robert Simpson Society was formed in 1980.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Simpson_(composer)

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Richard Watkins (born 1962) is a horn player. He was Principal Horn of the Philharmonia Orchestra from 1985 to 1996. Watkins is closely associated with promoting contemporary music for horn and has recorded for a variety of labels.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Watkins

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