Mayflower Ensemble in Chichester

 Mayflower Ensemble, Chichester Cathedral, Nov 11

Ruth Gipps was a Sussex-born composer and thus the Mayflower Ensemble played a piece of her music by way of commemoration of Chicheter Cathedral's 950th anniversary. Music is for the most part an abstract medium and so one can make of it what one will, for better or worse. Once I'd wondered if her Rhapsody in E-flat for Clarinet and String Quartet was an evocation of the South Downs it was hard not to think of it as such and so I persevered with the idea.

The rolling countryside and, possibly, Autumn colours were easy to correlate with an opening that led to a gigue-like passage, all en plein air with Alison Hughes's spacious clarinet above the soft strings. The tempo quickened a beat or two into what might have been chilly winds and in due course what might have been a cadenza turned out to be a coda and the clarinet was left alone in the wide open spaces. Other interpretations are available, I'm sure, and would be as valid as anything that might occur to me.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor studied with Vaughan-Williams at the Royal College of Music and then Vaughan-Williams taught composition there where Ruth was one of his students, which made for some of the subtlest programming here. Coleridge-Taylor's Clarinet Quintet, op. 10, was restless.  Some becalmed cello pizzicato from Nicola Heinrich didn't subdue the the overall hints of unrest. The Larghetto affettuoso second movement was tinged with sadness, the melodic line moving into the cello and then Liz Peller's violin and provided the most memorable music in the piece with its fine lyricism. The higher strings, with Catherine Lawlor, vln, and Ruth McGibbon, vla, were bright in the Scherzo but, never entirely settled and - agitato, indeed - the Allegro finally made its way to a pastiche 'classical' ending to round off a 'various' quintet.

With all the fine musicianship that Chichester is accustomed to, I'll monitor the Mayflower Ensemble's website for future appearances. String Quartets are one thing I'm aware of not seeing enough of in these parts and there's no shortage of repertoire from Haydn to the present day. While I'm happy enough to go to Wigmore Hall in January to hear a favourite, I'd rather the mountain came to Mahomet.