Ruth Gipps: Symphony No. 3 to be broadcast

At the moment, it seems, every other post on this blog is an announcement of some new development in the unfolding revival of the music of Ruth Gipps.  The latest is a piece of particularly good news: a performance of her Third Symphony (1965) by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, on the 4th December in a concert starting at 13.55, and which will be broadcast live on BBC Radio 3.  Free tickets for the performance — at the BBC Philharmonic studios in Salford — can be applied for in the ballot here until 10 p.m. this evening.  But anyone else can tune in to Radio 3 just before 2 p.m. here — https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000bxgl — and hear this lyrical and luminous symphony given a long-overdue rendition.  The conductor will be Rumon Gamba, who was responsible for the recent Chandos ‘all-Gipps’ record.

I don’t know when this symphony was last performed, but this is certainly its first broadcast in half a century.  It last went over the airwaves the 29th October 1969, the composer conducting the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.  The symphony’s only readily-available recording is of this performance: better than nothing, but it will be wonderful to hear it clearly and in stereo.

I would say that, for those unfamiliar with Ruth Gipps, this symphony is a particularly good introduction to her music.  It is full of tunes and sweet passages, and is suffused with her distinctive combination of wistfulness and good humour.  Many thanks to Rumon Gamba and the BBC for masterminding this.  I am looking forward to it very much.

Ruth Gipps: Symphony no. 3, second movement, Theme and Variations.

‘We will not break faith with ye’

At eleven o’clock this morning, there was a sound that is seldom heard in the crowded suburb of south London where I live.  Almost utter silence: the traffic banished, the sirens hushed.  Apart from an initial smattering of inevitable phone-bleeps, and the muttering of a far-off helicopter, there was only the whispering of leaves fluttering to earth in the crisp sunlight.   Normally, the cenotaph lies marooned in the turbulence of the one-way system on the London Road, but today the way was clear to the triangle of dewy grass where it stands.  There, in the presence of the Deputy Mayor of Merton, and the Chairman of the local branch of the British Legion, with Scouts (and Cubs and Rainbows and Beavers) and Sea, Air and Volunteer Police Cadets, the hymns had been sung, the unaccustomed words had been spoken, the bugle had sounded, and Mitcham for a moment lay in the quietness it knows only in these two November minutes of Remembrance.

Ralph Vaughan Williams: Pastoral Symphony, 2nd movement, with its famous bugle-call

“The Legion of the living salutes the Legion of the dead,” announced the vicar of St. Mark’s church.  “We will not break faith with ye,” we said.  It is scarcely expressible how strange such solemn language sounds now, in Mitcham and in almost every part of modern Britain, so great is the chasm between the civilisation that first uttered this sentence and the civilisation in which we say it now.  Yet say it we did, and there was no reason to suppose that anyone present did not mean it.

Squadron 43F (Mitcham and Morden) of the RAF Air Cadets.

The wreaths were laid, and the National Anthem sung.  Then renewed music from the band was the signal for the procession to march out and round to salute the dignitaries, and away up the London Road.  I was moved and impressed.  It was a superbly turned-out procession, and I think it marked Remembrance Sunday solemnly and fittingly.

The Cenotaph at Mitcham, Greater London, 10 November 2019.

And then the Police re-opened the road and flung wide the flood-gates, the first cars came round the corner, heralding the return of the unreceding tide to cut off the Cenotaph once again.  Sooner than we supposed, our affirmation of faith and honour was put to the test.  Will we remember, as (American Air Force) Colonel Gail Halvorsen told the televised Festival of Remembrance last night, that ‘attitude, gratitude and service before self bring happiness and fulfilment in life,’ and that ‘without providing for someone in need, the soul dies’?  Will we remember the fallen, and the price of war: invariably its own Hell to pay?  Will we, in spite of troubles and distractions, live in gratitude for our peace and freedom?

The last seconds before the A217 road was re-opened to traffic.

Ruth Gipps’ Clarinet Concerto receives its World Première

Applause for Peter Cigleris and the London Repertoire Orchestra after the world première of Ruth Gipps’ clarinet concerto.

It was through an evening of wind and wet leaves that I made my way to the church of St. James’s on Piccadilly, where the world première of Ruth Gipps’ clarinet concerto (Op. 9, 1940) was given last night by the orchestra she founded, the London Repertoire Orchestra.  I had been looking forward to this concert for some time, this being the first opportunity I have had to hear Gipps’ music played live.  I was not disappointed.

I had known the concerto was an early work, but hadn’t worked out that Ruth Gipps wrote it when she was only nineteen.  In fact, the programme notes reveal that it was written as a present for her husband-to-be, Robert Baker, who was himself a professional clarinet player.*  It also lends significance to the duets between oboe — the composer’s own instrument — and clarinet soloist in the second movement.  (Clarinet and oboe solos also appear in the second movement of her piano concerto).  Yet, extraordinarily, the concerto was never performed in her lifetime, remaining unheard for seven decades until last night’s concert.

The long-neglected music was as beautiful as I had hoped.  Even from a first hearing its sound was distinctively Gipps’: misty harmonies for the strings, bright treble rivulets in the woodwind, a plain-hearted lyricism throughout.  There was cheerfulness in many passages, but also in others a homely wistfulness which is definitely my cup of tea.  The overall mood of her Song for Orchestra (Op. 33, 1948) is not dissimilar, I think.

Two thoughts struck me, one sobering, the other more cheering.  Firstly, a work’s beauty is no guarantee of its being heard, still less of being acclaimed; craft alone, however sound and sincere, will not save a piece from falling into obscurity.  But, on the other hand, it is a that very beauty that gives it its best chance of rescue from that obscurity.  This is what has happened here, it seems.  Beauty has won out in the end.

Many thanks to the London Repertoire Orchestra, Peter Cigleris (the soloist), David Cutts (the conductor) and all involved in this performance.  And then for turning around and playing Sibelius’ Second Symphony!  I will remember the evening for a long time to come.

*Coincidentally, the man from whose seventeenth-century trade in piccadills the street of Piccadilly got its name was also called Robert Baker.

Happy Feast of All Saints!

According to tradition, here is a brief Fanfare for Allhallowstide.  I had meant to expand it a bit before now — at some point I will get round to it.

Happy Feast of All Saints!

  As we must one day die they also died, 
  But live now as we hope we too shall live:
  O keep in prayer all souls; O gladly give
  Your saints your greeting at Allhallowstide!

(D. Newman, Feast of All Saints, 1 November 2017)