Classical singers and choristers who were paying attention through high school and college know at least some of the music of 20th-century English composer C. Armstrong Gibbs. Fewer listeners and performers are likely to be familiar with the well-crafted, engaging, and occasionally masterly works for string orchestra included on this excellent program. Cambridge-educated and steeped in the mannerly, cultured musical styles exemplified by pre-World War I icons Gustav Holst and Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gibbs, whose teachers were traditionalists Charles Wood and Edward Dent, found his own musical voice in this same traditional context. So, as we listen we find ourselves reminded not only of Holst and Vaughan Williams, but also of Stanford, Finzi, and Elgar.
A personal tragedy (the death of his son) in 1943 and dramatic, irreversible changes in the musical landscape dampened Gibbs’ creative fires and relegated his compositional style to homeless status in the years following World War II. Yet, along the way, he wrote some very attractive works that show a profound understanding of string idiom, an endearing lightheartedness, and a knack for evoking impressions of time (“Rest at noon”) or place (“Over the high fells”) or mood (“A song of sleep”). Most of the works here are multi-movement pieces–three of them suites–and nearly all project the personality of one who is comfortable with life and harbors no personal agenda. The one exception is the Threnody for Walter de la Mare, a poignant and beautiful lament for the poet whose works inspired many of Gibbs’ finest songs and choral pieces, a children’s play, and even a few instrumental works.
The Guildhall Strings are marvelous in this repertoire, maintaining an enthusiastic and energetic style that allows this rarely performed music to really awake and be heard. Director Robert Salter must be commended for exploring and uncovering “a substantial archive” of Gibbs’ unpublished string music–including the Threnody–stored for many years at the Britten-Pears Music Library in Aldeburgh. Perhaps we’ll be hearing more from Gibbs and Guildhall before long?
