Robert Simpson - String Quartets Nos. 7 & 8 (Delmé Quartet)

Information

Composer: Robert Simpson

• (01) String Quartet No. 7
• (04) String Quartet No. 8

Delmé Quartet

Galina Solodchin & Jeremy Williams, violins

John Underwood, viola

Stephen Orton, cello

Date: 1989

Label: Hyperion

https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dc.asp?dc=D_CDA66117

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Review

Of all the composers to use the tonal system in the second half of the twentieth century, Shostakovich had an unsurpassed ability to stamp even the most apparently conventional figurations and passage work with his own distinctive personality. Like Shostakovich, Robert Simpson has a particular devotion to the string quartet, and while Simpson's music may not quite possess the instantly identifiable, consistently individual quality that marked out the Russian master even at his least inspired, it has in abundance that strong sense of purpose which is a prerequisite of a tonal idiom in what remains by and large a post-tonal era.

These two quartets are both inspired by men of science, Sir James Jeans and Professor David Gillett. It is the larger of the two works, No. 8, that is dedicated to Gillett, an entomologist and discoverer of a species of mosquito, while No. 7 (dedicated to Lady Jeans, the wife of the great astronomer) is relatively small scale. I find No. 7 the least successful of the two: the desire to evoke the stillness and emptiness of space in the slow outer sections of a single tripartite movement generates what, for Simpson, is rather neutral material, so that the skilful control of its harmonic and formal framework counts for relatively little.

The larger, four-movement Eighth Quartet is not without moments of marking time either, especially in the finale. But its character, launched with a fugue of memorable melodic expansiveness, is stronger, and the ending is a particularly fine example of a logical conclusion excitingly drawn from the uncompromising exploitation of vividly-imagined textural consistency. The Delme Quartet are Simpson specialists, and with open, evenly-balanced recorded sound, they are eloquent advocates of music that deserves to be far better known.

-- Arnold Whittall, 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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