Robert Simpson - String Quartets Nos. 1 & 4 (Delmé Quartet)

Information

Composer: Robert Simpson

• (01) String Quartet No. 1
• (03) String Quartet No. 4

Delmé Quartet

Galina Solodchin & John Trusler, violins

John Underwood, viola

Jonathan Williams, cello

Date: 1990

Label: Hyperion

https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dc.asp?dc=D_CDA66419

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Review

With this issue Hyperion have Simpson's first 11 quartets on CD—only three to go before we are up to date. What a rewarding enterprise this has been, and how gratifying for all those who lobbied for years on Simpson's behalf.

Hyperion have sensibly paired quartets from the first two groups of three—Nos. 1 to 3 composed in quick succession in the early 1950s, and Nos. 4 to 6 paraphrasing the Beethoven Razumovsky Quartets some 20 years later. The first of each trilogy might be expected to show signs of tentativeness. Not a bit of it. Quartet No. 1 immediately announces the late-Beethovenian active plainness peculiar to Simpson's quartet style. There is an aura of open-eyed mystery—the kind which comes from seeing more intently rather than from averting the gaze—and the conclusion daringly re-creates the transfigured-dance feeling of the end of Beethoven's Diabelli Variations or his last quartet.

Nor is No. 4 overawed by its self-imposed model. Distancing himself from a slavish paraphrase, Simpson shifts around the metrical, tonal and dramatic balances of Beethoven's Op. 59 No. 1. No fewer than three of the four movements (including a 933-bar scherzo!) are in triple time, a tonal argument between F and D (arising from Beethoven's finale) is laid out over the whole work, and some dramatic weight is transferred from first movement to finale. Do the ideas and their transformations breathe an independent life? To be honest I have more doubts than with the Sixth Quartet, or with the Fourth Symphony scherzo (modelled on that of Beethoven's Ninth). Rationalizing those doubts leads me to wonder whether there isn't a contradiction between the degree of harmonic friction and the prescribed Beethovenian dimensions; and by the arrival of the finale I feel a definite surfeit of fast triple movement. But these are early impressions, and experience suggests that tussling with music of this kind is still one of the most rewarding activities for anyone concerned with the living art of music. As ever, the Delme Quartet plays with utterly selfless dedication (though don't Simpson's pianissimos invite a more withdrawn sound?) and the recording quality, despite some intrusive background hiss, is well-judged.

-- 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 Delmé Quartet was conceived in a taxi travelling over London Bridge in 1962 by Granville Delmé Jones and Jurgen Hess (violins), John Underwood (viola) and Joy Hall (cello). Galina Solodchin joined the quartet in the late 1960s after the death of Granville Jones. John Trusler and Jonathan Williams joined the quartet in the mid-’70s. John Underwood is therefore the sole remaining foundermember. Over the past four decades the Delmé has appeared at most major European festivals. The quartet’s collaboration with a number of notable composers is well known, particularly that with the late Robert Simpson.
http://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/a.asp?a=A102

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