Ruth Gipps: Chamber Works Spanning Seven Decades

Ruth Gipps presents one of those awkward cases—a composer of genuine facility and ambition who never quite secured the recognition her advocates believe she deserved. This Prima Facie disc, spanning nearly seven decades of creative work, makes a reasonable argument for reassessment without entirely settling the matter.

The Sonata for cello and piano, op. 63, from 1978 anchors the program. It’s a substantial piece, running over thirteen minutes, and Gipps proves real command of the medium—the piano writing is idiomatic without being showy, the cello part lies gratefully under the fingers while making expressive demands. Joseph Spooner brings a warm, singing tone to the long-breathed melodies, though one wishes for more rhythmic bite in the faster sections. The language hovers somewhere between late Romantic gesture and a sort of English pastoral modernism that never quite commits to either impulse. There’s craftsmanship here, certainly. Whether there’s inevitability is another question.

Duncan Honeybourne tackles the solo piano works with admirable conviction. “The Fairy Shoemaker” from 1929—written when Gipps was all of eight years old—is a charming curiosity, nothing more. But the Theme and Variations, op. 57a, reveals a composer thinking seriously about structure and keyboard color. Honeybourne’s articulation in the faster variations could be cleaner; there’s some smudging in the passage work that obscures Gipps’s contrapuntal thinking. The Opalescence of 1989 (not to be confused with the earlier cello sonata of similar title) plays with harmonic ambiguity in ways that suggest Gipps was listening to what was happening around her, even if she chose not to fully engage with it.

The Scherzo and Adagio for Unaccompanied Cello, op. 68, strikes me as the most successful work here. Spooner navigates the double-stops and wide leaps with assurance, and Gipps’s formal sense—always her strength—operates at peak efficiency. The Scherzo has genuine wit, not just academic cleverness. The Adagio that follows doesn’t overstay its welcome, which is a virtue in itself.

David Heyes champions the Sonata for Double Bass and piano, op. 81, with the fervor of a true believer. And why not? Repertoire for the instrument remains limited enough that a well-crafted work deserves attention. Gipps writes for the bass with understanding—she avoids the twin pitfalls of treating it as a cello manqué or merely as comic relief. Heyes’s intonation in the upper register occasionally wavers, but his musicianship is never in doubt. The partnership with Honeybourne feels lived-in, responsive.

“The Ox and the Ass,” an introduction and carol from 1988, provides a moment of disarming simplicity. It’s effective without being profound—the kind of piece that would work beautifully in a church service and not demand repeated hearings at home.

The recorded sound from Holy Trinity Church, Hereford, and Cheap Street Church, Sherborne, serves the music well enough, though there’s a slight boominess in the bass frequencies that occasionally muddies textures. Nothing fatal.

What emerges from this generous survey is a portrait of a composer who knew her craft thoroughly, who wrote with confidence for the instruments at hand, and who maintained a consistent aesthetic vision across decades when such consistency might have seemed willfully retrograde. Gipps’s music is well-made in the way a solidly constructed piece of furniture is well-made—functional, pleasing to the eye, built to last. Whether it speaks with an essential voice, whether it demands to be heard… that’s where my enthusiasm falters. These performers believe it does. They make their case with dedication and skill. But conviction, however sincere, doesn’t always translate into revelation.