The Â鶹ԼÅÄ Philharmonic Orchestra welcome conductor Andrew Manze today for a programme featuring Ralph Vaughan Williams and Ruth Gipps.
English composer Ruth Gipps was never afraid to march to her own beat and she stayed true to her vision and her tastes, even as fashions changed during the mid-twentieth century. She disliked modernism, claiming that the ‘so-called 12 tone music, so-called serial music, so-called electronic music and so-called avant-garde music,’ was ‘utter rubbish,’ and a 'public con'. She greatly admired Vaughan Williams, one of her tutors at the Royal College of Music in London, proudly aligning herself with the English Pastoral school of composition. Nevertheless, her own unique, Romantic voice rings out clearly in her work, and her great gifts are evident in the very enjoyable Symphony No. 2, which she wrote between 1945-46, not long after finishing her studies. Sweeping and emotive, it demonstrates her ear for the dramatic and soulful.
In 1922, when Gipps was still just an infant, Vaughan Williams was a busy young composer, but even busy young composers need some downtime, and for Vaughan Williams, dancing was the perfect way to unwind. For many years he was an active member of the English Folk Dance Society, and he composed his Old King Cole ballet music for the Society’s Cambridge branch, to feature in the Cambridge's 1923 Festival of Music. The piece received its first performance outdoors in Nevile’s Court at Trinity College (the composer’s alma mater) on a warm June night. It’s a brilliantly conceived work and exemplifies Vaughan Williams’s humour. A rare chance to hear it this morning.
Vaughan Williams, Old King Cole: ballet
Gipps, Symphony No.2
Andrew Manze, conductor
