Robert Simpson: Symphony No. 5; Symphony No. 6 (2021)
The Lyrita label often offers early recordings, many of them live, of British music that has fallen out of fashion and awaits only a swing of the pendulum to bring it back to currency. Here, that aim coincides nicely with the centenary of the birth of composer Robert Simpson, not an unknown, certainly, but not often recorded in the 21st century. Simpson's music is dramatic and tumultuous, combining late Romantic intensity with rigorous structural devices that bring to mind what might have happened if Carl Nielsen had had ...
Read More
The Lyrita label often offers early recordings, many of them live, of British music that has fallen out of fashion and awaits only a swing of the pendulum to bring it back to currency. Here, that aim coincides nicely with the centenary of the birth of composer Robert Simpson, not an unknown, certainly, but not often recorded in the 21st century. Simpson's music is dramatic and tumultuous, combining late Romantic intensity with rigorous structural devices that bring to mind what might have happened if Carl Nielsen had had contemporary followers. Listeners get the world premieres of the Symphony No. 5 from 1973, with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by a young Andrew Davis, and the Symphony No. 6 of 1980, under the baton of Charles Groves. The Symphony No. 5 makes an especially strong case for revival with its slam-bang opening and its structure built on the notes of the whole-tone scale. Simpson wrote the last part of the work after a serious medical crisis. The canonic fourth movement, which...
Read Less
