Also featuring Jeanne Demessieux’ Poème, op. 9 for organ and orchestra (1949)
Concert takes place Saturday Jan. 31, 2026, 2 pm
By Liane Curtis
Ruth Gipps (1921-1999) was a British composer whose work is beginning to receive wide recognition and performance. In the US, the work of the Seattle Philharmonic, and their Music Director Adam Stern has led the way in bringing Gipps’ orchestral music, particularly her symphonies, into the mainstream.
The Seattle Philharmonic is an adventurous and high-level all-volunteer ensemble, and a recipient of one of our multi-year performance grants. I wanted to talk to Stern about the upcoming concert, and his on-going work with Gipps and her music, and how his interest in her came about. So we met over Zoom a few days ago. The program consists of Gipps, Symphony n. 1 in F Minor, Op. 22: I. Allegro moderato II. Adagio III. Allegro IV. Adagio; Jeanne Demessieux’ Poème, op. 9 for organ and orchestra; and G.F. Handel’s Water Music in an edition for modern orchestra.
*** *** *** ***
Adam Stern and Seattle Phil
Liane Curtis: SO! Ruth Gipps, Symphony n. 1, that is a wonderful symphony. I was just listening to it, I did not know it – and so that has not been done in the U.S.?
Adam Stern: It hasn’t been done – she wrote five symphonies. This will be the fourth time we’re giving the US premiere of one of them!
The first one we performed was the 2nd symphony. Then we did 4, it was the last piece that we played before Covid shut us down. After that was 5, a real labor of love, because the parts had disappeared after the first and only performance that Gipps herself conducted. So one of my Covid projects was to make a new edition of that, a new score and parts, which were used by the recent BBC Symphony recording. So now it’s making its way around the world!
LC: That’s fantastic! You’re in touch with her estate?
AS: Yes, I fell in love with her second symphony back in 2016. At that point that was the only one that had a recording. And, so I dug and I dug and I dug to try and find the music. I managed to track down her son, Lance Baker, the horn player. I wrote to him, and I said, “I hope I’m not being presumptuous, but I’ve fallen madly in love with your mother’s music, and I want so much to perform her second symphony. Where can I get the score and the parts?” I had written to every major publisher of English music I could think of, Boosey & Hawkes, Faber, Oxford University Press… And a couple of days later, I got a very nice email back from Lance’s wife Victoria, and she said “Oh, we’ve got all my mother-in-law’s orchestral music, scores and parts, here in our storeroom. Which one do you want?” So, nobody had ever published them!
LC: Isn’t that something!
AS: So, that’s how it all started. This lovely woman spent a whole day making scans of the score and the parts, and that second symphony performance was the result. Lance passed away a couple of years ago, but I’ve kept in touch with Victoria, who continues to be an incredible source of support – and music.
LC: This first symphony is very moving, and it does remind me in places of Vaughan Williams.
AS: Oh, yes, she was 21 when she wrote it; she’d been studying with him [at the Royal College of Music]. And as I get to know it, there are some similarities between this symphony of hers and his 5th symphony, which was written about at the same time, for instance in the instrumentation.
In the Gipps, the Finale was the hardest movement for me to crack, I studied deeply it over the Christmas holiday, and I finally got it. Gipps was newly married, and her husband had to serve in the Second World War. The last movement is this tug-of-war between these pastoral episodes and a section clearly marked as a march, very martial. There’s that theme, music depicting peace, but then the march music finds its way in, as if it’s taking over everything. The last thing that happens before the brass re-state the three chords that open the symphony, the clarinet has its beautiful pastoral theme, but it stops, it gets cut off. And – her husband was a clarinetist.
LC: Oh, wow!
AS: So it is as if she was saying, I wonder if he’s going to be all right? It’s an incredibly moving piece.
LC: Yes, the ending is so uncertain. It is moving but in an understated way.
LC: So, Jeanne Demessieux’ Poème for organ and orchestra – Benaroya Hall must have a good organ?
AS: OH, there’s a beautiful organ, we use it on occasion. But, this is a formidable, wonderful work, and Seattle’s leading organist, Joseph Adam is going to join us for it. As you undoubtedly know, Demessieux died way too young at only 46. And this is the only work she left behind for organ and orchestra. There’s a lot of solo organ music, but this is her only piece for organ and orchestra. And her treatment of the orchestra is extraordinary. She certainly had an ear for sonority, for the orchestration. It’s beautifully, beautifully done. It’s very rhapsodic; fast episodes, a slow episode, a cadenza, it’s all brilliant.
LC: Well, I’m sorry I won’t be there to hear it, it all sounds like a really thrilling concert!
*** *** *** ***
The Seattle Philharmonic produced this video to highlight the upcoming concert, in it organist Joseph Adam discusses the piece with Stern as well as demonstrating some of its formidable organ techniques. Stern also talks about Ruth Gipps Symphony n. 1. Jeanne Demessieux received this NYTimes article commemorating the centenary of her birth in 2021 (free link). It documents some of the overt sexism she had to endure, for instance The Boston Globe stated she was “too young and attractive to be an organist of the first rank.” And “Some churches still barred women from their organ lofts, not least Westminster Abbey, which had to give her special dispensation to perform in 1947.” And here is an article on Ruth Gipps (also celebrating her centennial in 2021); it includes a list of links to further resources at the end.
And again, here is this info about the concert — Saturday Jan. 31, 2026, 2 pm
Ruth Gipps (L, BCTV) and Jeanne Demessieux (Wikimedia)