Ruth Gipps: first broadcast of Symphony No. 1

Somehow it escaped my attention last month that Ruth Gipps’ First Symphony (op. 22) received its first radio broadcast on 22nd February (two days after the 101st anniversary of her birth and the day before the twenty-fifth of her death).  The broadcast, which was the centrepiece of BBC Radio 3’s Afternoon Concert, was a recording of a performance given at Salford in September last year by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Rumon Gamba.

I have long been curious to hear this work, as it is the only Gipps symphony for which no recording, however thin or scratchy, seemed to exist.  Nobody seemed to discuss it much either, and it even crossed my mind that it might have been suppressed or lost.  The lack of recording is scarcely surprising, it turns out, as September’s was its first performance since its 1940s première.  Judging by a single hearing, I found it a hugely enjoyable, fresh, joyful work, already (the composer having written it at the age of twenty-one) with that brightness and sparkiness which is so characteristic of her, and elsewhere offset by a more pensive lyricism.  Some might sneer that at certain moments the influence of her teacher Ralph Vaughan Williams is too obviously audible – but in my view that is no bad thing, and even if Gipps herself openly rejected the cult of originality in music (‘my music is a direct follow-on from that of Vaughan Williams, Bliss and Walton’), the symphony struck me me as distinctively and characteristically hers.  Vaughan Williams may well have influenced the work, but he could not have written it.  It has all her hallmarks.

It can be listened to here at around the one-hour mark, unfortunately only until 5 p.m. tomorrow.  Hopefully either the broadcast will be repeated – or a commercial recording will follow, to be added to those already made of three other Gipps symphonies by the same ensemble – or, ideally, both!

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!

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.