Robert Simpson - Symphonies Nos. 3 & 5 (Vernon Handley)

Information

Composer: Robert Simpson

• (01) Symphony No. 3
• (10) Symphony No. 5

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

Vernon Handley, conductor

Date: 1994

Label: Hyperion

https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dc.asp?dc=D_CDA66728

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Review

We have had to wait a long time for the first recording of Simpson's Fifth Symphony—22 years last May, to be precise, since its triumphant first performance in London's Royal Festival Hall. Still, better late than never. And in the meantime of course, Hyperion's magnificent Simpson series—above all their Gramophone Award-winning Ninth Symphony—has broadened the audience for this stirring and invigorating music. So there is a fair chance this latest issue will have the impact it deserves, particularly since it is coupled with what is probably Simpson's best-known work, the Third Symphony.

I am sure I am not alone in owing my first encounter with Simpson to the LSO's 1970 recording of the Third with Jascha Horenstein for Unicorn-Kanchana. That was an inspiring experience, a revelation of a kind of music one suspected must exist but despaired of ever finding, and it seems ungrateful to say that the recording quality and the playing were actually rather rough and ready. But on the new Hyperion disc the RPO and Vernon Handley play the symphony like the repertoire piece it deserves to be, and Hyperion's recording reveals a wealth of unsuspected detail and beauty. The Beethovenian impulse still comes across, and the abrasive edge is only slightly softened. But what has been gained is clarity, blend and perspective, plus a sense of dialogue (Simpson's polyphony never ceases to amaze) and an altogether subtler realization of the luminosity of Simpson's scoring. The long accumulating second movement is more absorbingly poetic, more witty in its dialogue, and more inevitable in its conclusion than I ever remember.

By rights we should also have comparative versions of the Fifth Symphony to discuss by now, and I might be able to point to one with even more dramatic immediacy than Handley's because this is surely one of Simpson's most vivid pieces. Moods of terror, anger, anxious probing and fierce determination are right on the surface, and there is a feeling of terrific will-power being exerted to transmute those moods into a symphonic experience. I suppose I want to hear more of the cutting edge of Simpson's scoring more piccolo trumpet and timpani in the first panic-stricken outburst, for example. But it is a fearsomely demanding score. And anyway, do I have the luxury to criticize? What I should be saying is that this is one of the great symphonies of the post-war era, magnificently realized by all concerned. This issue is surely destined to be a jewel in Hyperion's already starry Simpson crown.

-- Gramophone

More reviews:
http://www.classical.net/music/recs/reviews/h/hyp66728a.php

https://www.amazon.com/Simpson-Symphonies-Nos-3-5/dp/B000002ZUJ

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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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Vernon Handley (11 November 1930 – 10 September 2008) was a British conductor, known particularly for his support of British composers. Handley studied at the Guildhall School of Music in London, and subsequently with Adrian Boult. He is much revered for his enthusiastic and untiring championship of British music, including many lesser known and relatively neglected composers whose artistic reputations and popularity he often helped to revive. He is said to have recorded as many as a hundred premières of British works, including highly successful series of recordings on labels such as Hyperion, Chandos, EMI and Conifer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernon_Handley

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