Robert Simpson - Music for Brass (The Desford Colliery Caterpillar Band)

Information

Composer: Robert Simpson

• (01) Energy
• (06) The Four Temperaments
• (10) Vortex
• (11) Volcano
• (18) Introduction and allegro on a bass by Max Reger

The Desford Colliery Caterpillar Band

James Watson, conductor

Date: 1991

Label: Hyperion

https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dc.asp?dc=D_CDA66449

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Review

Robert Simpson, composer of symphonies, string quartets, and such, yes; author writing about music with great insight, yes; able administrator of music for the BBC, yes. But, improbably, composer of some of the most sophisticated and well-scored of all brass-band music? Well yes, that, too, this disc declares without a doubt; and the accompanying booklet reveals a not-so-dark secret: Simpson was once himself a cornet-player. Indeed, he played that instrument as a child (perhaps emulating Nielsen, who did the same thing?); and indeed Simpson at an early age 'wrote' variations on Annie Laurie by the process of getting a piano-playing friend to play the tune over and over while Simpson extemporized what he later described as the ''twiddly bits''. (It is not difficult to imagine eighteenth-century violinists doing the same thing with long-suffering harpsichord-players!)

The cornet-playing experience will no doubt have given Simpson a foundation for developing the marvellous sense of how to write for brass players he displayed here: all the music is most beautifully scored. It is also marvellously played by the Desford Colliery Caterpillar Band, a complicated title not, perhaps, suggesting to a new listener the quality of performance on offer here: superlative.

Thus Simpson's entirely serious, and sometimes complicated music receives, at the hands of these players under James Watson's very experienced direction, performances of a calibre I do not recall ever hearing before in the particular context. The varied sequence of Energy, The Four Temperaments (in a different order from that selected by either Hindemith or Nielsen), Vortex and Volcano all spell out the very best in both brass-band writing and brass-band classical performance: they are not to be missed. It happens that I found the relative turgidity of the Introduction and Allegro slightly less stellar in quality; a judgement perhaps influenced by musical antipathy to Reger than to Simpson!

The notes by Matthew Taylor are excellent, as is the quality of recording. This disc is not only required listening for every serious student of band music, but also strongly to be recommended to serious listeners of any persuasion who fancy that 'those brass bands' are not for them!

-- 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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