Dora Bright & Ruth Gipps: Piano Concertos

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The piano writing [in the Bright] is brilliant and subtle, even if the orchestral ideas are sometimes a little too portentous for their own good; but the gem of the work is a haunting slow movement…By... — BBC Music Magazine, December 2019, 4 out of 5 stars (Performance) / 3 out of 5 stars (Recording) More…

Release Date: 13th Sep 2019
Catalogue No: SOMMCD0273
Label: Somm
Length: 75 minutes

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Bright, D: Piano Concerto No. 1 in A minor

Work length24:25

$5.00

$6.45

$8.75

Samantha Ward
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra
Charles Peebles

I. Allegro moderato

Track length13:57

$3.00

$3.85

$5.25

II. Intermezzo - Andante espressivo

Track length4:30

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

III. Finale. Allegro

Track length5:58

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

Bright, D: Variations for Piano and Orchestra

Work length16:37

$8.00

$10.40

$14.00

Samantha Ward
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra
Charles Peebles

Thema. Semplice - Moderato

Track length1:01

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

Var. 1, Grazioso

Track length0:54

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

Var. 2, Con brio

Track length0:55

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

Var. 3, Andantino

Track length1:13

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

Var. 4, Tempo di valse

Track length1:22

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

Var. 5, Allegretto tranquillo

Track length1:23

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

Var. 6, Lento

Track length3:15

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

Var. 7, Finale. Scherzo

Track length6:34

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

Gipps: Piano Concerto in G minor, Op.34

Work length26:18

$5.00

$6.45

$8.75

Murray McLachlan
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra
Charles Peebles

I. Allegro moderato

Track length14:34

$3.00

$3.85

$5.25

II. Andante

Track length5:49

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

III. Vivace

Track length5:55

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

Gipps: Ambarvalia, Op. 70

Work length7:53

$2.00

$2.60

$3.50

Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra
Charles Peebles

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SOMM Recordings continues its championing of British music with revelatory performances of music for piano and orchestra by Dora Bright and Ruth Gipps. Separated by six decades – Bright born in 1862, Gipps in 1921 – both women shared a prodigious talent as pianists before turning to composition.

Three works – Bright’s A minor Piano Concerto and Variations for Piano and Orchestra and Gipps’s Ambarvalia receive first recordings alongside Gipps’s G minor Piano Concerto.

Admired by Liszt and George Bernard Shaw, Bright’s Piano Concerto (1892) demonstrates, says Robert Matthew-Walker in his illuminating notes, her distinctive “creative mastery and expressive character…clearly that of a composer who knows the solo instrument intimately; beautifully written, supremely well-laid out for the keyboard”.

Her Variations for Piano and Orchestra (1910) “is a remarkably impressive original composition, beautifully written for the solo instrument… skilfully orchestrated, shot through with much brilliant and quietly witty writing, technically fascinating and with unobtrusive master strokes of structural originality”.

A child-prodigy pianist and composer, Ruth Gipps studied oboe with Leon Goossens, piano with Arthur Alexander and composition with Gordon Jacob at the Royal College of Music. When her performing career was thwarted by a hand injury, she went on to compose five symphonies and several concertos, including the Piano Concerto in G minor, which boasts brilliantly virtuosic writing for soloist and orchestra. Gipps’s Ambarvalia is a rich, short orchestral study of Haydn-Mozart size without timpani.

Making her SOMM debut, the young British pianist Samantha Ward is the soloist for Bright’s Piano Concerto and Variations for Piano and Orchestra. Murray McLachlan returns to the label for Gipps’s Piano Concerto. His “adept fingerwork and energetic” contribution to Daydreams (SOMMCD233) featuring the chamber and instrumental music of Arthur Sullivan “does full justice to the scores”, declared MusicWeb International.

Also making welcome first appearances on SOMM are the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Charles Peebles.

Reviews

December 2019

The piano writing [in the Bright] is brilliant and subtle, even if the orchestral ideas are sometimes a little too portentous for their own good; but the gem of the work is a haunting slow movement…By contrast, Ruth Gipps’s G minor Concerto seizes one immediately with her distinctive personality and powerful, determined voice – in the manner of Bax to some degree, but with significant added pepper.

December 2019

The music is breezy, something the RLPO clearly enjoys. Ward is a fine player, as her previous disc of Freckleton proved, finding just the right flow for the appealing melodies. The Intermezzo-like central movement’s melody has a Schubertian rightness, ceding to an airy finale. Bright’s Variations are splendidly imagined, including a deliciously tripping waltz. The indefatigable McLachlan shines in the solo part of Gipps’ postwar concerto.

November 2019

SOMM should be applauded for making these undeservedly neglected works available to the wider listening public.

6th October 2019

These neglected British concertos are impassioned utterances both...Peebles secures invigorated playing in Bright’s seductive Variations for Piano and Orchestra, and in Gipps’s brief Ambarvalia.

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