Charlie Lovell-Jones, Bill Anderson, BBC Philharmonic & Rumon Gamba - Gipps: Orchestral Works, Vol. 4 (2025) [Hi-Res]

Rumon Gamba’s exploration of the music of Ruth Gipps continues with these world première recordings of the Fifth Symphony, Violin Concerto, and Leviathan, performed by the BBC Philharmonic. The acclaimed violinist Charlie Lovell-Jones takes the solo part in the Concerto.

Composed in 1943 and conceived for her elder brother, Bryan, the work is large in scale and shows remarkable assurance of touch for a twenty-two-year-old composer. Leviathan, for double-bassoon and orchestra, is performed here by Bill Anderson, contrabassoonist with the BBC Philharmonic. Dating from the late 1960s, the five-minute work demonstrates Gipps’s tremendous ability to write for wind instruments and also her skills as an orchestrator which allow the solo line to dominate despite its unusual tessitura.

Completed in 1982 and dedicated to Sir William Walton, Gipps’s Fifth Symphony is written for large-scale forces (quadruple wind, six horns, two harps, and extensive percussion); its final movement unusually takes the form of a Missa brevis for orches tra. On careful listening it becomes possible to identify the unsung words or phrases of the mass with individual instrumental lines; details of the orchestration, too, reflect the spirit of the liturgical sections.