Susan Spain-Dunk (1880-1962)
Violin Sonata No.3 in C minor (c.1910)
Violin Sonata in B minor; Romance only (1908)
Les Sylphes (c.1926-29)
Ruth Gipps (1921-1999)
Violin Sonata, Op.42 (1954)
Rhapsody for violin and piano, Op.27a (1943)
Evocation, Op.48 (1956)
Patrick Wastnage (violin)
Elizabeth Dunn (piano)
rec. 2021, St George’s Church Pinner View, Harrow; Henry Wood Hall, London
GUILD GMCD7827 [58]
As I’ve noted elsewhere, quite why a hitherto obscure composer suddenly receives multiple recordings is a perplexing question. Susan Spain-Dunk, Royal Academy alumnus, admired by Henry Wood, at whose Proms she conducted her own music from 1924-27, performer in Cobbett’s own string quartet (as a violist) and an active presence on the British scene up until the war is a decided case in point. She here shares disc space with another female composer, Ruth Gipps, whereas elsewhere Spain-Dunk is contextualised with her chamber music writing contemporaries such as Walford Davies, York Bowen (with whom she studied at the RAM), Gordon Jacob and others.
She was an expert violinist so it’s not surprising to find the Sonata No.3 here. Vestiges of late-Romanticism are present in the opening movement where Spain-Dunk pushes the violinist ungratefully high up the fingerboard to generate maximal contrast. She had an enviable gift for lyricism as she shows in the central slow movement - and for crafting grateful, agile piano accompaniments – and can carve out a stalking, dancing finale. A little earlier she wrote a Violin Sonata in B minor of which only the slow movement now survives, a sweetly lyrical Romance. Her other work is Les Sylphes written at a time when her popularity was at its height, the Henry Wood days. Never published it’s a fast and feisty showpiece.
Ruth Gipps has enjoyed recordings over a longer period than Spain-Dunk but aside from their sex there’s not a great deal to connect them. She too is represented by three of her works for violin and piano and they do, it’s true, reflect a similar kind of mood, though stylistically they’re very different. The Sonata dates from 1954 and is notable for its refinement of expression, for its cadenza – of some substance – and its more austere elements subsequently. Both performers noted, as Lewis Foreman records in his excellent and extensive booklet notes, that the Largo bore some similarity to Vaughan Williams’ Romance and Pastorale and its effortless folkloric impetus surely bears this out. The zesty finale is exciting and expert, though also stops for a poignant introspective section.
The Rhapsody was written for Gipps’s brother Bryan in wartime but not performed after war’s end in 1946. It’s a multi-sectional piece but at barely five minutes in length, it requires a composer of some skill to vest it with personality. Gipps delivers. There are abrasive sections but the prevailing mood is lyric. In Evocation, composed for the Hungarian violinist Marta Eitler in 1956, the year of the Soviet invasion of her country, Gipps writes a Celtic dance of some asperity which contrasts with surrounding material of a more refined nature.
Patrick Wastnage and Elizabeth Dunn met whilst they were studying at Guildhall many years ago and Wastnage has been a member of the BBC Symphony’s violin section for over 35 years, in addition to other commitments. They make a formidable pairing, alert to the other’s moods and quickly supportive. The recording is a fine one, overseen by Michael Ponder, though two locations are involved – the Gipps Sonata was recorded in Henry Wood Hall. The stylistic dissimilarity of the music may present obstacles to some and it would be trite to assert that the programming of the two women composers shows a torch being passed, from one to the other. Better to see these premiere recordings as an investigation into previously overlooked composers and enjoy it on those terms.
Jonathan Woolf
