This is the third volume in Chandos’ series exploring the orchestral music of Ruth Gipps, a composer whose works remain relatively unfamiliar. A child prodigy, Gipps won numerous performance competitions in her early years and debuted her first composition publicly at the age of eight. In 1937, at the age of sixteen, she entered the Royal College of Music, where she studied composition with Vaughan Williams and Gordon Jacob, and oboe with Leon Goossens. Gipps later became an oboist in the City of Birmingham Orchestra.
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Gipps’ Horn Concerto was written in 1968 for her son, Lance Baker, who premiered it a year later with the London Repertoire Orchestra, an ensemble founded and conducted by the composer. Virtuosic without ever crossing into showiness, the music strikes a fine balance between technical difficulty and lyrical rumination. The Scherzo features elegant wind writing, the horn a first among equals.
The Finale veers between passages of fast, infectious energy and moments of gentle lyricism, where the solo horn engages in dialogue with other soloists from the orchestra. All is dispatched by horn player Martin Owen with thrilling accuracy. Conductor Rumon Gamba and the BBC Philharmonic provide attentive and supportive accompaniment.
After completing her First Symphony in 1942, Ruth Gipps received a letter of enthusiastic praise from conductor George Weldon, who eventually premiered the work in 1945 with the City of Birmingham Orchestra, where Gipps also performed on the cor anglais. Hoping for broader recognition, she sent the symphony to the BBC before its premiere, but the score was rejected. According to Chandos, and quite surprisingly, this is the premiere recording of the work.
Symphony No. 1 (Op. 22) is an ambitious work. While there are moments in the outer movements where the thread of the symphonic argument seems to falter, her masterful orchestration and melodic inventiveness are consistently delightful. The inner movements drew me completely—the wind writing in the slow movement captivates. If the Scherzo’s opening brass fanfare suggests a martial tone, the dancing rhythms and playful melodies that follow seem to ignore the call to arms.
The brooding string line that opens the Finale suggests something ominous, but the mood soon shifts to a more pastoral vein. The main theme of the Allegro, with its march-like quality, is followed by more reflective music, building to an impressive climax before winding down and fading into nothingness, leaving emotional closure unresolved. The BBC Philharmonic plays with tremendous beauty and bravado, and Gamba seems an ideal interpreter of this music.
Ambarvalia (track 2), written for a small orchestra, is a memorial for composer and colleague Adrian Cruft. Mostly in compound meter (Ambarvalia, a Roman fertility rite, surely included dancing!), the opening’s playfulness subtly shifts to a more wistful sense of regret. Gipps’ orchestration is masterful, with wonderful writing for the winds and celesta, lovingly performed by the BBC players. Cringlemire Garden for string orchestra (track 6) is where the influence of Vaughan Williams is most evident. Its richly nuanced textures and ending solo for muted viola surely would have made her teacher smile.
The first volume in this series (2018) features outstanding performances of Gipps’ Second and Fourth Symphonies, while the second (2022) includes her Oboe Concerto, showcasing the soloist’s lyricism and virtuosity. This latest album, featuring repertoire from various decades of Gipps’ life, is arguably the best starting point—warmly recommended.
Album Details |
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|---|---|
| Album name | Ruth Gipps – Orchestral Works, Vol. 3 |
| Label | Chandos |
| Catalogue No. | CHAN 20284 |
| Amazon Music link | Stream here |
| Apple Music link | Stream here |
