Robert Simpson - Symphony No. 10 (Vernon Handley)

Information

Composer: Robert Simpson

• Symphony No. 10

Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra

Vernon Handley, conductor

Date: 1991

Label: Hyperion

https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dc.asp?dc=D_CDA66510

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Review

After the massive Ninth Symphony, winner of the Gramophone Contemporary Music Award in 1989, Simpson's Tenth is on an even more imposing scale (the Eleventh, completed in 1990, is a shorter work for chamber orchestra). On the whole I find it a rather tougher nut to crack.

The Tenth follows the classical layout of four separate movements for the first time since the Fourth Symphony of 1972 (and even that had an attacca between slow movement and finale). Here we have a taut, propulsive Allegro, a shadowy scherzo, a broad ABA slow movement and a wiry fugal finale with a sectional introduction and a tranquil second theme which is later combined with the first. Each movement sets off with the interval of a third, to which an octave leap cleaves.

Is this then Simpson's Hammerklavier? Even the opening theme, which throws down the gauntlet in two eruptions of sound, evokes the Beethovenian parallel. And it's not an entirely unhelpful one, I think, if only in suggesting the time-scale, the austerity and the fundamental power of the music. On the other hand, this is clearly nothing like the sustained paraphrase of Simpson's Razumovsky Quartets. Indeed, apart from recognizing the fugue subject as Hammerklavierish, he disavows the connection, stressing the avoidance of long lines in his first two movements and their cultivation in the slow movement and finale.

I'm not sure that strikes me especially. Rather the reverse, in fact, because the events of the first two movements are so striking that I come back to them with pleasurable anticipation, whereas the apparent plainness and lack of tension in long stretches of the slow movement do less to encourage such connected listening. I say apparent, partly to allow for the lessons of future acquaintance, and partly because I'm not sure the performance reacts as sensitively as it might do to the tensions of Simpson's lines and harmonies—reading the score suggests to me a more intense, hushed, exploratory character. Nor can I yet decide to what extent the lack of 'pull' I experience towards the conclusion of the finale is my failing, the composer's or the performers'.

Even in the first two movements, undeniably imposing though they are, I sense a more physically exciting experience struggling to get out. These are played considerably under the marked tempos (the slow movement by contrast is faster than marked). I've no idea whether that's a purely pragmatic decision or whether the composer changed his mind (as he has done by inserting punctuating bars of silence in the very opening idea), but I'd certainly love to hear a really virtuosic orchestra let loose on this fast music to really bring it to boiling point.

Not that the RLPO and Handley's achievement is anything less than admirable. This is an exceptionally demanding score and to play it with as much discipline and stamina as they do is no mean feat. And the listener, even while wrestling to catch Simpson's symphonic drift, can revel in the individuality of timbre he conjures from the orchestra, which again has to be a tribute to the performance. The vivid orchestration is the more remarkable for its avoidance of soloistic writing and indeed of any instrumental 'effects' beyond a modicum of pizzicato. Almost everything comes from harmony and registration, and I wondered in passing whether the sheer amount of chordal doubling at widely-spaced fifths, of growling double bassoon and gleaming piccolo, might reflect something of Simpson's recent experiences with the organ (his Ricercare and Passacaglia, Eppur si muove, of 1985).

Just as memorable are the passages where the driving invention marks time or freezes into glacial immobility (from 6'57'' in the first movement, from 6'50'' in the second, from 6'08'' in the third). And things like the droll bassoon episode in the finale (from 5'30'') or the stabbing repeated notes onto tritones and battering timpani (from 9'18'' in the same movement) where the finales of Sibelius's and Nielsen's Fourth symphonies seem momentarily to collide, are not easily forgotten. There are many such highlights in Simpson's Tenth, but be prepared for a more challenging time than with the Ninth. And if you're still unsure about whether to take the plunge with this outstanding symphonist, I strongly suggest you wait for the next scheduled issue in this series—Nos. 2 and 4.

Once again Hyperion's clean, well-balanced recording does nothing to obstruct the view, though I personally wouldn't mind being brought even closer to the action.

-- 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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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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