Bright Music in Mid-January

What a treat, last Thursday evening at the Royal College of Music, to hear Ruth Gipps’ Fourth and Vaughan Williams’ Eighth Symphonies played by the students’ Symphony Orchestra.  In fact, for me it was several treats wrapped up in one: it was the first time I have heard Vaughan Williams’ Eighth played live, the first live performance of a Ruth Gipps symphony I have heard at all, and, more generally, it was a delight to find the future of British music in such safe hands.  And after these past two years it was also a real tonic to drink in the fizz and the liveliness of a university atmosphere.

I already knew and loved these two symphonies, but had not realised what an interesting pairing they would make in concert.  In spite of their contrasting moods, both are adventurous as far as sonority is concerned, making lavish use of the timbres of woodwind and percussion in particular, and producing, in each case, moments of remarkably bright and gleaming sound — just the thing for mid-January.  

But their moods are certainly contrasting.  The Gipps, which was conducted by the great Martyn Brabbins, is overall rather more questioning and unsettled than the Vaughan Williams, even at times agonised, having, as Jill Halstead has put it, ‘an undercurrent of pessimism found in only a handful of her works.’  There is still that weaving together of spiky energy and romantic lyricism that is so characteristic of Gipps, along with melismatic solo, duet or trio passages, but the backdrop against which they are heard is a melancholy and uncertain one of shifting harmonics and rhythms.

“That is a really difficult symphony,” was Martyn Brabbins’ opening to the little ‘mid-amble’ he delivered to the audience after the Gipps, and yet one would hardly have thought, had he not told us, that he and the orchestra had only had two rehearsal sessions together before the performance.  “But that’s how it is in the U. K.: we don’t have much rehearsal time.  So they have to get used to it!” he said.  He was very warm about the musicians.  He also made some observations which put into perspective how remarkable the recent Ruth Gipps Revival has been: even this great British conductor admitted that she had been in his blind spot; he had heard of her name in the seventies, but never met her, and this was only the second piece of hers that he had ever conducted.  She really did seem to have dropped into obscurity.  Yet now, with no small thanks to him, the next generation of young musicians have had the chance to play and hear her music for themselves.

Next came Vaughan Williams’ Symphony no. 8, in which each movement was placed under the baton of a different student conductor (and which resulted in the unusual spectacle of four conductors lining up to take a bow at the end!).   This too was clever programming, because, while the outer movements are famous for using ‘all the ’phones and ’spiels known to the composer’, the second movement uses only the wind sections, and the third only strings.  I rather liked the style of the conductor of the third movement, while the chap who won the jackpot to conduct the tintinnabulous final movement — “it’s just like Christmas,” as Martyn Brabbins put it — was absolutely in his element.  The various solos were carried off masterfully, and the overall blend was testament to rock-solid musicianship.

This is a symphony so full of life and gaiety that it might be a surprise — but if so an instructive one — to find that Vaughan Williams wrote it in his early eighties.  The first movement alone contains almost his entire, and considerable, range of moods: the solemnity, the radiance, the tempestuousness, the serenity.  But the mood is overall joyous and optimistic; only in the thoughtful third movement, the Cavatina, a kind of latter-day Tallis Fantasia, are there pangs of sorrow, or regret, or something like it.  It is full-blooded, lusty music that reminds you that you are alive, and is all wrought together so masterfully: rich and intricate, but never too much.  Martyn Brabbins admitted that he used not to like it when he was young, “but now,” he said, “I can’t do without it;” and nor can I.

How wonderful that this should be done, as Gipps’ centenary year draws to a close, and Vaughan Williams’ begins.  Many thanks to all involved for a wonderful evening.