Robert Simpson - String Quartet No. 12; String Quintet No. 1 (Coull Quartet)

Information

Composer: Robert Simpson

• (01) String Quartet No. 12
• (03) String Quintet No. 1 in one movement

Coull Quartet

Roger Coull & Philip Gallaway, violins

David Curtis, viola

John Todd, cello

with

Roger Bigley, viola

Date: 1992

Label: Hyperion

https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dc.asp?dc=D_CDA66503

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Review

At first glance the Twelfth Quartet looks like familiar territory: a slow fugal movement rising from absorbing quiet to an impassioned climax and falling back to near-stillness; after this an immense scherzo, at the same time echoing and transforming Beethovenian dance-rhythms. In fact the musical voyage is quite different from anything else in Simpson, and no matter how often you hear it, there are always new relationships to be discovered—like the way the Puckish repeated viola figure towards the end of scherzo-finale mimics the contour of the first movement's opening phrase.

By now the Coull Quartet have had plenty of time to get acquainted with Simpson's musical language—and it shows: few first recordings of music by a living composer can have sounded as authoritative as these. Roger Bigley—the second viola in the Quintet—may be a relative newcomer, but he seems to fit as effortlessly as the fifth finger in a well-worn glove. The Quintet does tread conspicuously new ground, not just in the way Simpson exploits the richer, fuller quintet sound, but in the way he plays with our expectations: at first the opening idea pretends it's a fugue subject, but each time the final note is held so that a big chord in fifths is built up; then as the andante grows more eloquent there's a sudden, short glimpse of something new—a high, dancing allegro. Gradually these glimpses get bigger, until eventually the allegro tempo takes over; and then the process is reversed, with the former meditative andante reintroduced by degrees and consolidated in the coda. The players seem to have it all in their grasp, and the recordings are atmospheric and clear, if just a little over-bright in high fortissimos.

-- Stephen Johnson, 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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The Coull Quartet  was founded at the Royal Academy of Music, London in 1974 under the guidance of renowned quartet leader Sidney Griller. They were appointed Quartet-in-Residence by the University of Warwick in 1977. The quartet has performed and broadcast extensively throughout the UK, and has made tours of Western Europe, the Americas, Australia, China, India and the Far East. Since the mid-1980s the Coull Quartet has made over 30 recordings featuring a wide selection of the repertoire from the complete Mendelssohn and Schubert quartets to 20th century and contemporary British chamber music.

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

http://www.coullquartet.com/

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