Ruth Gipps - Clarinet Chamber Music (Peter Cigleris; etc.)

Information

Composer: Ruth Gipps

• Rhapsody for Clarinet & String Quartet in E-Flat Major, Op. 23
• The Kelpie of Corrievreckan, Op. 5b
• Quintet for Oboe, Clarinet & String Trio, Op. 16
• Prelude for Solo Bass Clarinet, Op. 51
• Clarinet Sonata, Op. 45

Peter Cigleris, clarinet

Gareth Hulse, oboe

Duncan Honeybourne, piano

Tippett Quartet

Date: 2021

Label: SOMM

https://somm-recordings.com/recording/dedication-the-clarinet-chamber-music-of-ruth-gipps/

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Review

The oboe was Ruth Gipps’s main instrument (she studied with Leon Goossens and was at one time principal oboist in the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra), although she had been a concert-rank pianist in her youth. Her oboe-writing is demonstrated in the lovely Quintet, probably composed in 1941 or 1942 for herself and her husband, clarinettist Robert Baker, to play (they were married in 1942, shortly before he was called up for military service). The clarinet-writing here is also highly idiomatic – so, too, that for the three string players drawn from the Tippett Quartet – and this is a true dialogue between the five. Nonetheless, the oboe certainly holds a position of primus inter pares and is beautifully rendered here by Gareth Hulse.

The main focus on the disc is the clarinet, however, and Peter Cigleris is wholly within Gipps’s rich, warm-hearted idiom, whether in the Quintet or the Rhapsody with string quartet – the Tippett Quartet providing excellent support – composed in 1941, in which she shows herself at one with the English pastoral tradition without sounding at all like her mentor, Vaughan Williams. The engaging tone poem The Kelpie of Corrievreckan (c1940), another student piece, was the first written for her future husband and is a vibrant recounting of Charles Mackay’s poem about the predatory shapeshifter from Corrievreckan’s whirlpool who lures a feckless girl to her doom beneath the waves.

The later Prelude for unaccompanied bass clarinet (1957) is outwardly more abstract but no less expressive, full of vivid mood changes after a lugubrious opening. Finest of all is the Cobbett Prize-winning Sonata (1956), rightly hailed by booklet annotator Robert Matthew-Walker as ‘one of the finest such works by any British composer’. Cigleris and accompanist Duncan Honeybourne are ideal executants in an account I cannot see being bettered any time soon. Somm’s sound is unobtrusively superb. Recommended.

-- Guy Rickards, Gramophone

More reviews:
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2021/Sep/Gipps-clarinet-SOMMCD0641.htm

http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2021/Nov/Gipps-clarinet-SOMMCD0641.htm

https://www.classical-music.com/reviews/chamber/dedication-the-clarinet-music-of-ruth-gipps/

https://www.wtju.net/33237-2/

https://www.allmusic.com/album/dedication-the-clarinet-chamber-music-of-ruth-gipps-mw0003569917

https://limelightmagazine.com.au/reviews/dedication-ruth-gipps-peter-cigleris-gareth-hulse-duncan-honeybourne-tippett-quartet/

https://www.amazon.com/Dedication-Cigleris-Honeybourne-Tippett-Recordings/dp/B09BM8GDM6

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Ruth Gipps (20 February 1921 – 23 February 1999) was an English composer, oboist, pianist and impresario. Gipps was a child prodigy; she studied oboe with Léon Goossens, piano with Arthur Alexander and composition with Gordon Jacob, and later with Ralph Vaughan Williams. She was an accomplished all-round musician, as a soloist on both oboe and piano as well as a prolific composer. Gipps' music is marked by a skilful use of instrumental colour, and often shows the influence of Vaughan Williams, rejecting the trends in avant-garde modern music such as serialism and twelve-tone music.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Gipps

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English clarinetist Peter Cigleris studied at the Birmingham Conservatoire and the Royal College of Music. As a soloist he has performed in many venues across the UK and Europe and premiered several new works as well as giving performances of concertos by Mozart, Weber, Finzi and Arnold. As an orchestral player he has worked with several well-known English orchestras including the CBSO, BBCCO and Orchestra of the Swan, and is in demand as a session player. As a chamber musician Cigleris works with numerous musicians, and also played with the dynamic Canteloube Trio for many years.

https://divineartrecords.com/artist/peter-cigleris/

https://www.petercigleris.com/

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