It may be an unworthy thought, but I confess to a twinge of sadness at the appearance of this disc. These are two of my personal favourites in the Simpson symphonic canon and I certainly rejoice to hear them so finely played and beautifully recorded. But there used to be a special pleasure in knowing that the acquaintance was shared with perhaps only a few hundred listeners huddled around cassettes of dubious legality. Too bad for me; so much the better for British music.
The opening of the Second Symphony is breathtaking—an 'active but mysterious' idea, utterly distinctive in its silvery harmonic colouring, it holds the key to a world where wistfulness can transmute into energy and where energy itself occasionally has to be rescued from the obsessional corners it drives itself into. The slow movement is no less characteristic of its composer in its gentle restorative quality, probing unfamiliar areas of the mind and conjuring them to life. For the finale I am not sure I can find any parallel in Simpson's output; the rhythmic drive and grittiness of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony is obviously there in the background, but there is an almost irresponsible rollicking character which puts me in mind of the Hindemith of the Symphonic Metamorphoses. I revel in every note of it.
The Fourth Symphony contains perhaps the most remarkable and certainly the most instantly communicative of Simpson's Beethoven paraphrases. The model here is the scherzo of the Choral Symphony, with a Haydn quotation supplying material for the Trio section. To stay so close to the structure of the original and yet to create such an entirely new and individual experience is a feat of genuine compositional virtuosity. It is like Icarus and the sun all over again, except that Simpson gets away with it.
I could sympathize with anyone who found the following slow movement somewhat featureless—I'm some way from getting the message myself. But experience suggests that a mind-stretching power will eventually disclose itself. In the meantime there are the constantly renewing horizons of the first movement to savour, with that special combination of transparent texture, blunt rhythms and polytonal shadings that gives Simpson's musical paragraphs their forward-looking momentum. And finally there are the massively energizing shouts which crown the work. All this gives the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and Vernon Handley plenty to get their teeth into, and their response is as splendid as in their Gramophone Award-winning account of Simpson's Ninth Symphony (12/88). May the present disc enjoy as much success as that one.'