Nirvana for composers and performers alike is a state where music unfolds of its own accord, without apparent conscious effort—and not many composers could claim to have reached that enviable condition more consistently than Robert Simpson. Not that will-power and effort are absent from his music—when the situation demands, no one directs the flow more determinedly than he does. But often the entire course of the work seems to be latent in its very first notes, only needing him to open a window and let it flood in.
Both the Horn Quartet of 1976 and the Trio of 1984 (just before the Gramophone Award-winning Ninth Symphony 12/88) make their mark on first hearing. That may be just my acclimatization over the years; or it may be that the performances are exceptionally fine (they certainly seemed so to me). But I would rather put it down to enthralling qualities in the pieces themselves. What it is not down to is any special idiomatic treatment of the horn—if anything that side of things is kept too rigorously in check. But the sense of power in reserve, of a satisfying fluidity of texture, of tiny ideas snowballing with irresistible inevitability, of frowns easing into poetry, all these things proclaim a true kinship with late Beethoven, long before the Quartet's final variation movement openly reveals its debt to Beethoven's last piano sonata.
Top-flight recordings from Hyperion here. I shouldn't like to put their Simpson CDs (some 15 to date) into a strict order of recommendation; but if pushed, I would have to place this one near the top.'