Ruth Gipps’ Horn Concerto on the BBC Young Musician of the Year

Last weekend saw the culmination, at long last, of the 2020 edition of the BBC’s biennial Young Musician of the Year contest.  It had been tantalisingly near its end last year — the semi-finals had actually been filmed, though not broadcast — when the pandemic swept in, which of course prevented the final itself from taking place until now.  The final three contestants have been waiting all year for their bid for the trophy!

As if the competition’s return were not good enough news, the competition final has also produced another item for chronicles of the Ruth Gipps Revival.  As usual, each of the three finalists had the opportunity to play a concerto of their own choosing with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of conductor Mark Wigglesworth, and, for her entry, the French-horn player Annemarie Federle from Cambridge chose the horn concerto by Ruth Gipps.  Perhaps this was not a coincidence, as her teacher, David Pyatt, had in the late 1990s made the first recording of the concerto; until recently, this was one of only a handful of decent studio recordings of any her music.

Federle’s fine rendition — surely the first television broadcast of a work by Ruth Gipps — can be watched here or listened to here, though the whole concert is well worth hearing!