Simpson, R: Symphony No. 9

“If you know that feeling of expectancy, of vast potential energy, at the outset of a great symphony, you'll surely respond to the opening of Simpson's Ninth – and be wholly engrossed. You'll be led through shifting pedal-points and wedge-shaped themes encompassing a specific harmonic universe; through waves of energy pulsating fit to burst, until burst they do into a titanic scherzo; through slow, disembodied traceries of string lines, through awe-inspiring climaxes to a no less aweinspiring hushed coda. And as rising scales pass through the coda's pedal-points into the final glacial sonority you'll know that you've heard one of the finest symphonies of the post-war era.
The composer adds an explanatory 18-minute talk. Here are laid bare some of the salient constructional features of the work – the opening's basis in chorale prelude procedures (a fairly cosmic rethinking thereof!), the single underlying pulse of the entire work (a recurrent feature in Simpson's output, but never before applied on this scale), the palindromic variations in the second half, the debts to Bach, Beethoven and Bruckner. To which one might add that the rigorous processes described in this talk suggest a somewhat unlikely kinship with Bartók at his most abstract (as in the first movement of the Music for strings, percussion and celesta).
Bartók, it's safe to say, has as little to do with this work's symphonic instincts as any other 'big name' of the last 50 years or so. Simpson stands not at any fixed pole of today's music, but rather at a kind of magnetic north, free from attempts of musical cartographers to pin down his position, spiritually allied to composers of any age and style who have penetrated to the essence of music's motion in time. A totally absorbing symphony and the performance and recording are surely the best possible tribute to all concerned.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“although the world of feeling his music encompasses may be complex, his language retains a basic simplicity of utterance...Handley is a masterly interpreter...For anyone interested in the progress of the symphony in England in the twentieth century, this is a self-recommending set.” Penguin Guide, 2011 edition

“One of the outstanding recording projects of our time … 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 Magazine