- Gipps composed this concerto in 1948, the same year she completed her D.Mus. at the University of Durham.1
- This concerto premiered on March 21, 1949, at the Birmingham Town Hall. George Weldon conducted the premiere and Gipps was the piano soloist.2
- From 1944-5, Gipps played the English horn in the City of Birmingham Orchestra under Weldon’s direction. Weldon was a strong supporter of Gipps’s compositions. He was also the one who encouraged her to embark on a conducting career.3
- The concerto’s dedication reads, “For my mother.”4
- Gipps’ mother was the principal of the Bexhill School of Music, where Gipps had her first musical instruction at the age of 3.5
- The concerto received a revival in 1971, when it was performed and broadcast6 by the BBC Northern Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Gipps.7
Sources
- Jill Halstead, Lewis Foreman, and J.N.F. Laurie-Beckett, “Gipps, Ruth,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed August 12, 2021, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000011199.
- Jill Halstead, Ruth Gipps: Anti-Modernism, Nationalism and Difference in English Music (London: Routledge, 2016), 170.
- Halstead, Foreman, and Laurie-Beckett, “Gipps, Ruth,” Grove Music Online.
- Halstead, Ruth Gipps: Anti-Modernism, Nationalism and Difference in English Music, 170.
- Halstead, Foreman, and Laurie-Beckett, “Gipps, Ruth,” Grove Music Online.
- Bret Johnson, “Ruth Gipps Obituary,” The Guardian (March 29, 1999), accessed August 12, 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/news/1999/mar/30/guardianobituaries2.
- “Ruth Gipps,” Contemporary Music Review 11 no. 1 (1994), 125-125, published online August 21, 2009, accessed August 12, 2021, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/07494469400640781.
Cut IDs
23406