Special offer. Gipps: Orchestral Works Vol. 3
Martin Owen (horn), BBC Philharmonic, Rumon Gamba
Awards:
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Presto Recording of the Week, 3rd January 2025
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BBC Music Magazine, February 2025, Orchestral Choice
The 1968 Horn Concerto might only last 17 minutes, but the majority of them are action-packed, and Martin Owen’s horn playing, nimble and characterful, is a pleasure in itself. The major piece...
Special offer. Gipps: Orchestral Works Vol. 3
Martin Owen (horn), BBC Philharmonic, Rumon Gamba
Purchase product
Awards:
-
Presto Recording of the Week, 3rd January 2025
-
BBC Music Magazine, February 2025, Orchestral Choice
The 1968 Horn Concerto might only last 17 minutes, but the majority of them are action-packed, and Martin Owen’s horn playing, nimble and characterful, is a pleasure in itself. The major piece...
About
For this third instalment in his survey of orchestral works by Ruth Gipps, Rumon Gamba, conducting the BBC Philharmonic, is joined by the horn soloist Martin Owen.
The album opens with Gipps’s Coronation Procession. The piece depicts the journey of the Crown(s), perhaps as observed from the Royal Coach, culminating in the entry to Westminster Abbey. Written in January 1953, the piece was not used at the coronation, and instead first performed in September 1954 in Melbourne, Australia. Ambarvalia is a memorial tribute of 1988 by Gipps to the composer and colleague Adrian Cruft, who had died in February 1987. Gipps wrote the Horn Concerto in 1968 for her son, Lance Baker. The piece was later championed by Frank Lloyd, who gave a BBC broadcast in 1982. Here the virtuoso Martin Owen brings the work vividly to life.
The Lake District was the inspiration for the ‘Impression’ Cringlemire Garden, a pastoral miniature for string orchestra.
Dated September 1942, the First Symphony is a direct reflection of the horrors of war. The work demonstrates Gipps’s personal voice, and features some wonderful writing for winds.
Contents and tracklist
Spotlight on this release
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Ruth Gipps from Rumon Gamba and the BBC Philharmonic
3rd Jan 2025
This third volume of the British composer's orchestral works on Chandos features the world premiere recordings of Symphony No. 1, the Coronation Procession from 1953 and the elegy Ambarvalia, plus the Horn Concerto and Cringlemire Garden.
Awards and reviews
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Presto Recording of the Week3rd January 2025
-
BBC Music MagazineFebruary 2025Orchestral Choice
February 2025
The 1968 Horn Concerto might only last 17 minutes, but the majority of them are action-packed, and Martin Owen’s horn playing, nimble and characterful, is a pleasure in itself. The major piece here – a splendid discovery – is the first of her five symphonies, a wartime creation.
February 2025
These performances under the careful guidance of Rumon Gamba are exemplary in every way and superbly recorded...Martin Owen gives a stunningly athletic performance [of the Horn Concerto] and Gipps mavens can go for this disc without reservation.
3rd January 2025
The Coronation Procession is a little gem, relatively light on pomp and circumstance until the final stretch but brimming with colour, energy and excitement as Gipps evokes cavalry, fanfares and the poised elegance of the young queen with almost cinematic vividness.
2nd January 2025
Here, in the symphony’s first recording, the BBC Philharmonic does full justice to a work of ambitious scope – an early showcase for the blend of fluent lyricism and muscular rhythmic drive, untroubled by fashion, that would continue into Gipps’s later works.
