Damn it all, you’d think Hyperion would have the grace to slip in at least one less-than-wonderful instalment in their Robert Simpson series, if only to give us collectors a pecking order. I thought maybe a coupling of Simpson’s debut symphony, completed in 1951 at the age of 30, with one completed 30 years later whose early history was slightly problematic, might fit the bill. I should have known better. What’s on offer is yet another inspiring encounter with music whose surface affinities (the dynamism of Beethoven, the registral awareness of Berlioz, the obsessional drive of Bartok and so on) gradually fade from the mind as its own unique blend of unquenchable energy and alert meditation takes you over. Like a number of composers, Simpson seems to have responded to the power of late Beethoven and thought, ‘I can do that’; like very few, he actually can.
I suppose I could just about bring myself to say that Simpson’s symphonies after No. 1 wield a similar language with more freedom, and that the successor to No. 8 (the Gramophone Award-winning Ninth, 12/88) likewise loosens up its fierce concentration to even more satisfying effect. That would just be my way of discharging my duty and saying that the coupling of Symphonies Nos. 3 and 5 would be my suggestion for a first Simpson buy (2/95), then No. 9, then Nos. 2 and 4 (12/92).
The First is in fact far more than a confident declaration of Simpson’s arrival on the scene (though it also has that feeling). Its construction on the basis of proportionally related tempos enables it to be simultaneously part of the world of conflict and feeling and yet at the same time somehow soaring above it. The Eighth, by contrast, seems to embody some colossal inner rage. Each partial untying of its knotted psyche unleashes apocalyptic fury, and the quietus of harmonic resolution is denied until the very last moment.
Older collectors may have treasured the Boult recording of No. 1 (HMV, 4/57 – nla), which is, however, eclipsed by this new performance in every way. The Eighth had an unhappy premiere performance in 1982 from the Royal Danish Orchestra under Jerzy Semkow; I attended the studio performance by the BBC Philharmonic a couple of years later which vindicated the composer. For this new recording Vernon Handley has clearly devoted a labour of love to it, and he seems to have persuaded the Royal Philharmonic to do the same.
This Hyperion series deserves to stand as a monument while other more superficially glamorous ventures rise and fall around it. If it does not do so, and if it does not eventually force Simpson’s breakthrough into the orchestral repertoire, there will truly be no justice.'