Steven Schwartz <[log in to unmask]> replied to Kai Czepiczka:

>>Last week I got a recording of Cecil Armstrong Gibbs' Symphonies Nos.  1
>>[op.70] and 3 ["Westmorland, op.104] on Marco Polo.  This is nice music,
>>but that's not the reason I'm writing now.  The reason is the following
>>sentence:
>
>This is very welcome news.  I knew Gibbs as a marvellous songwriter and had
>no idea he wrote larger works.  Off to the Web.

As a short note (surely Kai is planning a more detailed review...),
these symphonies might not be quite up to Vaughan-Williams, Walton, Bax,
or Moeran, but they are very moving all the same, with a delicacy of
touch which is quite individual at times.  Symphony No. 3 was composed
shortly after C.A.Gibbs's son was killed at war, and contains a truly
heart-breaking theme -- sorry for the "adolescent writing":-) It has
nothing schmaltzy about it, though.  Some may even think that this music
is a bit too restrained for such broad structures.

Now his masterpiece among larger works is supposed to be "Odysseus"
(possibly his 2nd symphony, actually).  If I recall correctly, the New
Grove insisted that Gibbs was unlucky throughout his life whenever it
came to larger works, and so he was about Odysseus, which could not be
premiered, having been completed in 1938 and scheduled for a first
performance at the end of 1939...

Best wishes,

Thanh-Tam Le
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