Day 87
Gipps Symphony no 2 op 30
BBC National Orchestra of Wales
Rumon Gamba
My oboe playing friends speak highly of Ruth Gipps and her name crops up fairly frequently in record reviews and musical journalism these days so I thought it was time that I sampled some of her music, particularly as this fits in with my current theme of exploring British symphonies.
Gipps, who was a professional oboe player and a pianist of some repute. She wrote 5 symphonies - the second, which dates from 1945, is in a single movement. I enjoyed listening to it but I have to confess I didn’t find it very memorable. Indeed writing this up a few hours after hearing the work I confess that I struggled to remember anything much about the music. There were some lovely reflective movements in the slow section in the middle but other than that nothing has stuck. Perhaps this was, unlike for most of the pieces in this project I didn’t have a score of the work, so perhaps my concentration in listening in the first place was not as strong as it has been with many of the other pieces I have listened to here.
I’ve no idea whether this was typical of Gipp’s output or not - certainly some commentators seem to suggest that it is her concertos that show the best of her work. I’ll try to hear the oboe or horn concertos before long to see if they give me a more balanced view of her music.
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