Energy 
1 Movement 1: Adagio maestoso 2:30
2 Movement 2: Andante tranquillo 1:15
3 Movement 3: Allegro grazioso 0:55
4 Movement 4: Allegro molto 2:08
5 Movement 5: Presto vivo 3:01

The Four Temperaments 
6 Movement 1: Scherzo: Presto 3:53
7 Movement 2: Intermezzo: Allegro placido 4:42
8 Movement 3: Elegy: Mesto, sempre non vibrato 7:28
9 Movement 4: Fantasia: Allegro irato 5:40

10 Vortex 9:02

Volcano 
11 Movement 1: Calmissimo 2:05
12 Movement 2: Allegro 1:21
13 Movement 3: Meno mosso 1:01
14 Movement 4: Allegroq 1:41
15 Movement 5: Meno mosso 0:35
16 Movement 6: Allegro 4:24
17 Movement 7: Lento 1:09

Introduction and allegro on a bass by Max Reger 
18 Movement 1: Adagio. Pesante 6:23
19 Movement 2: Allegro vivace 9:30

The Desford Colliery Caterpillar Band
James Watson (conductor)

There is arguably no composer with a stronger affinity to the world of the brass band than Robert Simpson. As a boy of seven, Simpson, like his great mentor Carl Nielsen, took up the cornet, his first crucial experience in music-making, playing in brass bands as a child. His first attempt at composition was a set of variations for cornet on Annie Laurie. He did not know how to write a piano part so he got a friend who could play by ear to play Annie Laurie over and over again while he put in all the twiddly bits on the cornet. So brass band music is in Robert Simpson’s blood. His complete output is on this disc.

Energy This is Simpson’s first essay for the medium and is one of the most instantly attractive and freshly original works in his oeuvre. It was commissioned for the 1971 Brass Band World Championship at the Royal Albert Hall, London, in October of that year. Any listener familiar with Simpson’s work will know that energy is an essential part of his music. This work is literally a single composed accelerando, similar in design to the second movement of the Symphony No 3 (1962) and the concluding fugue of the vast String Quartet No 9 (1982).

Energy is made up of five short sections, gradually increasing in activity from a solemn Adagio maestoso introduction to a fiercely exuberant finale, Presto vivo. Each section is a little faster than the previous one, thereby creating the impression of a massive acceleration in momentum and excitement, despite the fact that the basic pulse that opens the work remains unaltered throughout. Energy is dedicated to Eric Ball, himself a renowned conductor and composer of brass band music.

The Four Temperaments Just as Nielsen provided witty, illuminating notes for his Symphony No 2, which shares the same title, so Robert Simpson prefaced the score of this work with the following words: The sanguine temperament crashes through life with irrepressible enthusiasm. Obstacles stop him only for a moment, and he goes roaring on as if nothing happened. The phlegmatic temperament is placid, not readily upset. It is not stupid or bovine (as is sometimes supposed) but it cannot be easily ruffled. Here it is seen to be unperturbed by a considerable disturbance from the timpani and snare drum. The melancholic nature is not merely lugubrious. It is deep-feeling, serious and dignified. There is something grand and courageous in its gloom and strength and in its willingness to face grim facts. The choleric man is quick to anger, but is not simply vituperative – he has in him good and generous qualities, but even when he is calm something is smouldering inside him, ready to burst into flame.

Each temperament is dedicated to a friend of the composer, respectively Martin Anderson, Dick Edwards, Robert Barnes, and John and Sylvia Brooks. The work is an organic whole, the closest Simpson approached to a fully fledged four-movement symphony for brass band, with two explosive outer movements surrounding two calmer ones. Certainly its bold design and grand conception suggest a work of truly symphonic dimensions. The Four Temperaments was completed in 1983.

Vortex This is Simpson’s last work for brass band. It is dedicated to the composer John Pickard as atonement for having stolen (inadvertently) a title that had already been used by him. It is the shortest of the brass band pieces, but it retains something of the muscular symphonic fibre that pervaded The Four Temperaments. The music is truly vortex-like and is finally sucked down into one note, referred to by the composer as ‘not really a tonic note, more a plughole note’!

Vortex is in Robert Simpson’s highly characteristic fast triple-time pulse, which is maintained for the entire duration of the piece. Beginning mysteriously with a sinister muttering motive low on tubas and trombones, the music grows with considerable strength as powerful stretches of vigorous music contrast with quieter moments. These latter moments seem to reveal a new transparency of sound in the composer’s band scoring. The work concludes with a formidable blaze of sound recalling the final pages of Simpson’s Symphony No 10 (1988).

Volcano This is Simpson’s second work for brass band. Like Energy is owes its existence to a commission from the National Brass Band Championships of Britain, and like Vortex it is dedicated to a fellow composer, this time Edmund Rubbra.

Robert Simpson said that Volcano can be heard as an evocation of a volcanic eruption, as the expression of a volcanic temperament (thereby prefiguring The Four Temperaments written just four years later), or purely as a piece of music. Unlike Vortex, the tempo constantly fluctuates in a manner that mey recall the later symphonies of Havergal Brian, and an overall pattern emerges, contrasting slow and fast tempi. The uneasy tension that hovers around the opening Calmissimo might convey to the listener the gentle smouldering of a volcano, soon to be shattered by the ferocity of the first spasmodic eruptions. In between the violent Allegros are placed two Meno mosso sections. Here serene, softly sustained melodies on solo cornets and tenor horn drift past ‘as from a clear sky’, against rich, long-held chords. When this section occurs a third and final time, Lento just as a fleeting reminiscence, the music quietly disappears into space; the volcano is calm once more.

Introduction and allegro on a bass by Max Reger Even if Reger was not one of the deepest formative influences on Robert Simpson’s music, he was a composer who continually fascinated Simpson thoughout his creative life. The bass referred to in the title occurs towards the end (bar 103) of the fugue of Reger’s great organ Fantasia and Fugue in D minor, Op 135b, completed in 1916, the year of its composer’s death.

Simpson has altered Reger’s 12/8 metre to a 3/4 pulse, and treated the original (which first appeared in a vast ritenuto) as an allegro. Like Brahms in the great passacaglia from his Symphony No 4, Simpson has changed one note only, so as to make the bass combinable with a series of rising fourths, a feature strikingly evident in his Symphony No 9, the work that immediately preceded this Introduction and Allegro.

The extended slow introduction, Adagio — Pesante, is mysterious, awesome, based on fragments from Reger’s bass which emerge in many different forms and different melodic shapes throughout. After a big climax is reached, a stabbing repeated-note figure provides a link into the main Allegro vivace where the Reger bass is presented complete for the first time. Other themes are also introduced which show the rising fourth as a prominent interval. The final section is a thrilling crescendo of almost Brucknerian intensity, which uses Reger’s own treatment of his bass at its peak, providing a thunderous culmination to one of the most impressive and challenging works in the entire brass band repertoire. ---Matthew Taylor , hyperion-records.co.uk

download (mp3 @320 kbs):

uploaded yandex 4shared mega mediafire solidfiles zalivalka cloudmailru oboom

back

1. Symphony No. 2: Allegro grazioso
2. Symphony No. 2: Largo cantabile            play
3. Symphony No. 2: Non troppo allegro, ma con brio
4. Symphony No. 4: Allegro moderato
5. Symphony No. 4: Presto
6. Symphony No. 4: Andante
7. Symphony No. 4: Allegro vivace

Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra
Vernon Handley – conductor

Robert (Wilfred Levick) Simpson (2 March 1921 – 21 November 1997) was an English composer and long-serving BBC producer and broadcaster. He is best known for his orchestral and chamber music (including 11 symphonies and 15 string quartets), and for his writings on the music of Beethoven, Bruckner, Nielsen and Sibelius. He studied composition under Herbert Howells. Remarkably for a composer who was still alive, a Robert Simpson Society was formed in 1980 by individuals concerned that Simpson's music was unfairly neglected. The Society works to bring Simpson's music to a wider public by sponsoring recordings and live performances of his work, by issuing a journal and other publications, and by maintaining an archive.

The Symphony No. 2 by Robert Simpson was completed in 1956 and dedicated to Anthony Bernard, conductor of the London Chamber Orchestra, though the first performance was in fact given by the Hallé Orchestra conducted by Sir John Barbirolli in 16 July 1957 at the Cheltenham Festival. This is one of Simpson's most accessible works. He used similar orchestration to that used by Ludwig van Beethoven in his early symphonies, with the exception of high D trumpets being used instead of the standard B flat trumpets.

The Symphony No. 4 by Robert Simpson was written between 1970 and 1972 and commissioned by the The Hallé who gave the premiere, conducted by James Loughran, at the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, on 6 April 1973. The symphony was Simpson's largest work to date and uses a reasonably large orchestra. This was Simpson's first 'orthodox' four movement symphony and is the only one consciously 'classical' in layout. The overall tonality is E flat, and the work contains many musical references to Ludwig van Beethoven and Joseph Haydn.

"What was it that prompted a living British composer to quote from the first movement of SYMPHONY NO. 76 in E flat? The composer in question—Robert Simpson—took this simple idea (a passage not even derived from the main theme) because of its innocence. It appears in the Trio section of Simpson's Fourth Symphony (1972) and from the composer's point-of-view is an important motif; the contrast of this innocent idea with what had gone before is instrumental in altering the nature of the reprise of the Scherzo." --Antony Hodgson

download: uploaded yandex 4shared mediafire solidfiles mega zalivalka filecloudio anonfiles oboom

back

1. Symphony No. 1: First Movement, Part 1            play
2. Symphony No. 1: First Movement, Part 2
3. Symphony No. 1: First Movement, Part 3
4. Symphony No. 1: First Movement, Part 4
5. Symphony No. 1: Second Movement, Part 1
6. Symphony No. 1: Second Movement, Part 2
7. Symphony No. 1: Second Movement, Part 3
8. Symphony No. 1: Third Movement, Part 1
9. Symphony No. 1: Third Movement, Part 2
10. Symphony No. 1: Third Movement, Part 3
11. Symphony No. 1: Third Movement, Part 4
12. Symphony No. 1: Third Movement, Part 5
13. Symphony No. 8: Poco Animato                      play
14. Symphony No. 8: Scherzo: Minaccioso
15. Symphony No. 8: Adagio
16. Symphony No. 8: Finale: Presto

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Vernon Handley – conductor

GRAMOPHONE EDITOR'S CHOICE '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' --Gramophone

'Great music indeed, and performed with enormous understanding and control by Handley and the Royal Philharmonic. Hyperion's resplendent recording is a joy; the huge climaxes in both works are projected with molten intensity. Valiant performances; staggering music. Buy' --BBC Music Magazine

`Exemplary performances, the sound is superb and the RPO rises magnificently to the challenge of Simpson's vivid symphonic imagination' --The Sunday Times

download: uploaded yandex 4shared mediafire solidfiles mega zalivalka filecloudio anonfiles oboom

back

1   Symphony No. 3 - 1962: Allegro ma non tropo
2   Symphony No. 3 - 1962: Adagio                      play
3   Symphony No. 3 - 1962: Adagio
4   Symphony No. 3 - 1962: Adagio
5   Symphony No. 3 - 1962: Adagio
6   Symphony No. 3 - 1962: Adagio
7   Symphony No. 3 - 1962: Adagio
8   Symphony No. 3 - 1962: Adagio
9   Symphony No. 3 - 1962: Adagio
10   Symphony No. 5 - 1972: Allegro
11   Symphony No. 5 - 1972: Allegro
12   Symphony No. 5 - 1972: Allegro
13   Symphony No. 5 - 1972: Allegro                    play
14   Symphony No. 5 - 1972: Canone 1: Comodo e tranquillo
15   Symphony No. 5 - 1972: Scherzino: Molto vivace
16   Symphony No. 5 - 1972: Canone 2: Adagio
17   Symphony No. 5 - 1972: Finale: Molto allegro e con fuoco

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Vernon Handley – conductor

Recording:
14 February 1994, St Augustine's Church, Kilburn, London (Symphony 5)
24 May 1994, St Augustine's Church, Kilburn, London (Symphony No 3)

Surely Robert Simpson ranks among the greatest symphonists of the twentieth century. The Third, Fifth, and Ninth symphonies are probably his greatest achievements, though I would be hard-pressed to say which of these three is the greatest. A good case can be made for the Fifth, however, which is certainly one of the most original works ever composed. If you have never sampled any of Simpson's symphonic works, this is probably the best place to start. Be prepared, however: Simpson's works are highly dissonant in nature, and they demand a lot from the listener. That dissonance is produced primarily as a result of his style of composition, which is governed by the presence of two opposing tonal centers, which often collide against each other. Simpson's music is not atonal, but bi-tonal.

Not for Simpson the angst that characterizes the symphonies of Shostakovich and Pettersson. Instead, there is a much more formal detachment, devoid of any traces of emotion. All the same, his music is fraught with a Brucknerian majesty. As one reviewer has said, it is as though one is encountering some sort of strange interstellar phenomenon, utterly beyond the realm of human experience. This is of course their weakness and their strength.

The Third is probably best-known for its extended last section, which starts as an Adagio and gradually accelerates over the space of some 15 minutes to eventually explode in "Beethovenian momentum". The Fifth is best-known for that incredible single-note pulse which plays in the background throughout most of the work, for the most part inaudible, except at the beginning and at the very end of the work where it quietly endures sphinx-like in absolute triumph. It brings to mind that same enigma that confronts the listener in Ives' "Unanswered Question": Whence the cosmos?, and all those unutterable questions that flood the mind when looking up into the night sky.

This is a remarkable recording, with exceptionally well-written album notes. Bravo to Hyperion for its most excellent Simpson series! It's my sincere hope that Simpson's time will eventually come. His music deserves to be heard. These two symphonies are undeniably among the most original symphonic works of our time.

download: uploaded yandex 4shared mediafire solidfiles mega zalivalka filecloudio anonfiles oboom

back

1. Symphony No 6-1977 (1)
2. Symphony No 6-1977 (2)
3. Symphony No 6-1977 (4)
4. Symphony No 6-1977 (4)
5. Symphony No 6-1977 (5)
6. Symphony No 6-1977 (6)
7. Symphony No 6-1977 (7)
8. Symphony No 6-1977 (8)
9. Symphony No 6-1977 (9)
10. Symphony No 6-1977 (10)
11. Symphony No 6-1977 (11)
12. Symphony No 6-1977 (12)
13. Symphony No 7-1977 (13)
14. Symphony No 7-1977 (14)
15. Symphony No 7-1977 (15)
16. Symphony No 7-1977 (16)
17. Symphony No 7-1977 (17)
18. Symphony No 7-1977 (18)
19. Symphony No 7-1977 (19)
20. Symphony No 7-1977 (20)
21. Symphony No 7-1977 (21)
22. Symphony No 7-1977 (22)
23. Symphony No 7-1977 (23)

Royal Liverprool Philharmonic Orchestra
Vernon Handley – conductor

These are two of the most extraordinary British symphonies to emerge since the Second World War. Simpson (b. 1921) tends to build his ideas as musical cells, but one will be motile, while the other is static. He will combine these and then let them evolve. It only seems atonal, but it isn't. Simpson lets the music emerge or submerge when it wants to. You can hear hints of Sibelius's moodiness, but beyond Sibelius, you won't be able to identify anybody other than Simpson. Hyperion is releasing all of Simpson's symphonies as well as his string quartets. Start here with these masterpieces. ---Paul Cook, amazon.com

Long-time readers will recall that I have recommended several Simpson disks before. Hyperion recordings of Nos. 2 &4 and Nos. 3 & 5 are both outstanding recordings, and the CD with No. 9 features not only fascinating music, but also a spoken exegesis by the composer himself, making that recording one of the most recommendable symphonic CDs I have ever had the pleasure to hear. Only the Hyperion recording of No. 10 proved a disappointment to me: not that the music is unenjoyable, but rather that I just cannot seem to come to grips with it. It did not move me at first hearing as the other Simpson symphonies had, and repeated listenings have not won me over. (A recording of two of his string quartets – 10 and 11, I believe – also left me distinctly underwhelmed).

This recording of Symphonies 6 and 7 has been around for some time now (it was recorded in 1987), but I had never seen a copy on the shelves until fairly recently. Naturally, I snapped it right up (as reader Mike Thomas says, I love to recommend things that show up singly – if at all – on record store shelves!) and zoomed home to give it a listen. Symphony No. 6 is interesting – something of a big symphony, quite expressive, and fun to listen to. But it was No. 7, a smaller work, more intimate, that really caught my ear. Interestingly, the liner notes say that it was written by Simpson with the idea of being played for a solitary listener – not for public performance. Ladies and gentleman, I invite each of you to take the opportunity to be that solitary listener. Let the music of Robert Simpson speak to you as it has to me. Feel yourself enriched by the vision of this remarkable man, and take the opportunity he will afford you to reflect on your own vision of your own life. ---Karl W. Nehring, robertsimpson.info

download: uploaded yandex 4shared mediafire solidfiles mega zalivalka filecloudio anonfiles oboom

back

1 	Symphony No 11 (1990) 	28:56
2 	Variations On A Theme By Nielsen (1983) 	25:47

City Of London Sinfonia
Nicholas Ward – leader
Matthew Taylor – conductor

Alongside many other enterprising ventures, Hyperion have put us in their debt with their impressive Simpson series. As far as symphonies are concerned the present release completes the cycle. Moreover, the Variations on a theme by Nielsen, one of Simpson’s most enjoyable and approachable works, have – at long last – found their way onto disc. (My fingers are still hurting for having been kept crossed for so many years!). I have long loved this marvellous work, and I cannot understand why it is not heard more often and why it has remained unrecorded for so many years. Now, here it is in a superb performance, carefully prepared, magnificently played and entirely convincing. Simpson’s long-lasting affection for and understanding of Nielsen’s music are well known, and his book (Carl Nielsen, Symphonist) remains indispensable reading for anyone interested in the Danish composer’s work. Nielsen’s shadow has loomed large over Simpson’s symphonic output, more in spirit than in letter. However the Variations are the only work of his that pays a direct though entirely personal tribute to Nielsen. The theme chosen by Simpson comes from some incidental music written in 1925 for Bergstedt’s play Ebbe Skammelsen, thus more or less contemporary with the enigmatic Sixth Symphony. Simpson alone could have lighted on that theme, for who else may have known that score? The theme is scored for wind instruments; and its jollity conceals some unexpected things, for each instrument or group of instruments goes on its own way, each in its own tonality, something that surely appealed to Simpson. The Variations, though they are played without a break, fall into two large sections of fairly equal length, viz. theme and nine variations and a long Finale. Moreover, the first part itself falls into four different sections: theme and variations I-III forming the introduction, variations IV-VI forming a Scherzo-like build-up to the climactic seventh variation, variation VIII being a quicksilver, humorous Scherzo leading into the ninth variation (the longest one) functioning as the slow movement. The whole set is then capped by the imposing Finale. This superb work is as intricately worked-out as anything else in Simpson’s symphonic output, but the colourful scoring as well as the energy and humour displayed throughout make it one of Simpson’s most endearing achievements.

The Symphony No.11 was written for Matthew Taylor after Simpson had heard him conduct a performance of his Seventh Symphony with a (mostly) student orchestra. So, no wonder that Taylor took over from Vernon Handley here, the more so that Taylor actually conducted the work’s first performance. When compared to the monumental Ninth and Tenth Symphonies, the Eleventh Symphony is shorter and more economically scored, and – on the whole – rather more austere and restrained than any of its predecessors, although it too has its grand moments. It is in two movements of equal length, i.e. a long predominantly slow movement and an equally long and weighty Finale. The lighter, chamber-like textures emphasise the strictly contrapuntal writing of much of the music. This is particularly striking in the somewhat understated first movement. The Finale opens like a light-footed Scherzo à la Mendelssohn, but soon gathers considerable momentum, briefly relieved by more static episodes, finally reaching a towering climax punctuated by defiant, menacing timpani strokes, before dissolving into the ambiguous coda, "until the whole things ends with a flick of the wrist, as if dismissed" (thus Robert Simpson as quoted in Taylor’s notes). Simpson’s Eleventh Symphony, however, should not be regarded as a musical testament of some sort, but rather as a pointer towards new directions he might have followed. This is how I understand its somewhat inconclusive ending.

This release, appropriately dedicated to the late Ted Perry, is up to Hyperion’s best. Performances and production are simply magnificent, so that this splendid disc is warmly and unreservedly recommended. My record of the month, for sure. Maybe Hyperion will now manage to record Simpson’s concertos? ---Hubert Culot, musicweb-international.com

download (mp3 @320 kbs):

uploaded yandex 4shared mega mediafire solidfiles zalivalka cloudmailru oboom

back

1. Symphony No. 9: Part 1
2. Symphony No. 9: Part 2
3. Symphony No. 9: Part 3              play
4. Symphony No. 9: Part 4
5. Symphony No. 9: Part 5
6. Symphony No. 9: Part 6
7. Symphony No. 9: Part 7
8. Symphony No. 9: Part 8
9. Symphony No. 9: Part 9
10. Symphony No. 9: Part 10
11. Symphony No. 9: Part 11            play
12. Symphony No. 9: Part 12
13. Symphony No. 9: Part 13
14. Symphony No. 9: Part 14
15. Symphony No. 9: Part 15
16. Symphony No. 9: Part 16
17. Symphony No. 9: Part 17
18. Robert Simpson describes his 9th symphony

Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra
Vernon Handley – conductor

The Symphony No. 9 by Robert Simpson was composed between 1985 and 1987 and commissioned by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra who gave the premiere under Vernon Handley at the Poole Arts Centre on 8 April, 1987. The work was dedicated to his second wife, Angela. It has been called ‘the largest piece of music written in one tempo’ and, more than any other Simpson symphony, met with immediate critical acclaim. Some music critics and admirers of Simpson’s music consider this symphony to be his finest.

The work is in one, vast movement in a three part form; a chorale-prelude style opening section which goes headlong into a giant scherzo before a slow, fugal third part which is followed by a theme and variations. The scherzo second part is often treated as an extended climax of the symphony, meaning that the structure of the whole work could be seen to be in two halves, each divided into two sections.

Currently, the only commercially available CD is a Hyperion Records performed by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra conducted by Vernon Handley. The disc includes a 20-minute talk by Simpson about the symphony illustrated with excerpts from Handley's recording.

download: uploaded yandex 4shared mediafire solidfiles mega zalivalka filecloudio anonfiles oboom

back