Is Yuri Simonov, who turns 80 today, a live-action Warner Brothers cartoon? The only thing missing is the celluloid dickey rolling up like a blind. It only gets more preposterous as it goes on. You’re welcome to watch the whole thing, but on the assumption you’ve got places to go and things to do, I’m cueing it up to around the 12:30 mark.
If you can look past the histrionics, Simonov is actually a very fine conductor, who deserves to be much better known in the West. He just gets a little carried away, that’s all. Evidently he must be a trip to see in concert, but he takes his rehearsals very seriously. Here he is preparing Wagner, so that in concert he can let “The Flying Dutchman” really fly.
My post yesterday about the centenary of Robert Simpson brought a recommendation in the comments section for his Symphony No. 9. That reminded me that Simpson’s Ninth was made possible through the munificence of an unlikely source – Phil Lesh.
Prior to cofounding the eclectic, long-running rock band The Grateful Dead, Lesh studied at Mills College with Luciano Berio, alongside Steve Reich and Robert Moran. His interest in contemporary classical music endured, so that he became the anonymous benefactor of numerous English composers.
Among them was not only Robert Simpson, but one of Simpson’s great enthusiasms, Havergal Brian. Lesh financed the first recording of Brian’s “Gothic Symphony,” a work that made it into the Guinness Book for being the world’s largest symphony.
You can learn more about it in this article from 1991 in the Los Angeles Times:
Integrity never guarantees popularity. But it may get you a mention on Classic Ross Amico on your centenary.
Today is the 100th anniversary of the birth of English composer Robert Simpson. A conscientious objector during World War II, Simpson served in a mobile surgical unit during the London Blitz. On the side, he studied composition with Herbert Howells. Eventually music got the upper hand, and Simpson abandoned medicine. He did, however, become a doctor – a Doctor of Music – on graduation from Durham University.
In 1951, he joined the staff of the British Broadcasting Corporation. There, he became one of the organization’s most-respected producers. He would remain with the BBC for the better part of three decades. When corporate meddling began to erode the quality of broadcast in the late ‘70s, Simpson was among those who protested the loudest. He clashed with management, went to the press, and ultimately resigned, only months before he would have been eligible to retire with full pension. (Ah, the world of radio. I know it well.)
That kind of integrity is also reflected in his music, which includes 11 expertly-crafted symphonies and 15 string quartets. Simpson’s music has always had his admirers. Unusually for a living composer, a Robert Simpson Society was formed in 1980, with the aim of promoting his work.
Simpson himself greatly respected Beethoven, Bruckner, Nielsen, and Sibelius. He gave insightful talks on their music and added to their scholarship. As a producer, he was an active champion of the works of Havergal Brian, the eccentric autodidact who wrote 32 symphonies – 20 of them after the age of 80. In particular, Simpson supervised the historic Proms broadcast of Brian’s Symphony No. 1, the “Gothic,” frequently cited as the largest symphony ever composed.
In 1956, Simpson was awarded a Carl Nielsen Gold Medal. In 1963, he received a Medal of Honor from the Bruckner Society of America. Unusual for an amateur, he was also made a Fellow of the British Astronomical Association. (Astronomy was another one of Simpson’s great passions.) He refused an appointment as Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1980.
In 1986, he moved to Ireland. There, he lived on Tralee Bay in Kerry. Five years later, while on a lecture tour, he suffered a severe stroke which left him in debilitating pain for the remaining six years of his life. He died in 1997.
Most of his major works have been documented on the Hyperion label, the symphonies conducted by Vernon Handley. His music has also been recorded by Sir Adrian Boult, Jascha Horenstein, William Boughton, and Rafael Wallfisch.
The Fourth Symphony is as good an introduction as any, with a scherzo transparently modeled after its counterpart in Beethoven’s 9th. Further, the overall tone of the work strikes me as buoyant and optimistic. I hope you enjoy it. It’s not background music, but it is rewarding.
A lifetime of integrity counts for something. But it certainly doesn’t hurt to have the compositional chops to back it up. Happy birthday, Robert Simpson.
On the day we observe Frederic Chopin’s birthday, has anyone else seen “Impromptu” (1991)?
Judy Davis, at her most flamboyant, plays the cigar-smoking, trouser-wearing George Sand, who scrawls by candlelight thinly-veiled fictions about her own ardent and often scandalous love affairs, while in an adjacent chamber, a young Hugh Grant, as the consumptive Chopin, improvises morbid piano fantasies.
The supporting parts are heavy with historical figures of bohemian Paris: Julian Sands as Liszt, Mandy Patinkin as Alfred de Musset, Bernadette Peters as Liszt’s mistress, Marie d’Agoult, Ralph Brown as Delacroix, and Emma Thompson as the would-be socialite who naively offers them her house.
This is the Romantic movement as farce, a feature-length “Frasier” episode by way of Merchant-Ivory, or perhaps “Smiles of a Summer Night” as dreamt by Bob Hope. The director is frequent Sondheim collaborator James Lapine.
If you’re searching for a profound experience, this most certainly is not it. But if you’ve a hankering for classical music junk food, you’ve come to the right place. Is it historically accurate? I wouldn’t recommend it as the basis for any term papers. But if you liked Thompson’s “Sense and Sensibility,” the Branagh version of “Much Ado About Nothing,” or “Amadeus,” definitely check it out. If it doesn’t put a smile on your face, you’re too grumpy for me. And I would say that’s saying something.
