I chose the name of the short, delightful piece by Ruth Gipps as the title for this album partly because the music that Gipps wrote illustrates the much-discussed aspect of humour and the bassoon in a tasteful and perceptive manner. Yes, it has a ‘moo’ in it, just as Alan Ridout’s Pigs contains a few grunts, but these are real pieces where the humour is simply an ingredient in music which is not primarily about creating cheap laughs at the expense of the instrument. The bassoon has such a wealth of characters and expressions (including humour), which I really hope this album demonstrates in its very wide range of moods and styles.

The programme here covers a century of music (the earliest is Holbrooke from 1906), much of it little known, including several first commercial recordings. Add these pieces to all the other wonderful bassoon repertoire from the eighteenth century to the present day which explores every aspect of the instrument, and we will be that much closer to an ‘equal amongst woodwinds’ perception of the bassoon which—even in the twenty-first century—is still surprisingly elusive.

As a student, Michael John Norris (born in 1934) studied composition and theory as well as the bassoon. He was principal bassoonist in the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra from 1966 to 1986, then continued his studies at the University of Glasgow, where he was awarded a BMus in 1990. Many bassoonists love to play trios and quartets, and a few like to ‘have a go’ at writing such pieces, but this ‘Tango’ displays real composition skills which reflect his significant and varied output as a composer. The result here is a delightful piece which is both attractive and imaginative. It was composed in 1980 and first performed in a charity concert that year by Andrew Gordon, Andrew Hunter and the composer.

Michael Dewar Head (born in Eastbourne in 1900) is mainly remembered as a composer for his numerous songs. He was a singer himself—his first public recital was at the Wigmore Hall in 1929 when he accompanied himself at the piano. Some will remember him as an examiner for the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, in those often scary moments when nervous young musicians take their grade examinations! ‘Clouds’ is one of Three Fantastic Pieces for bassoon and piano (presumably emphasizing ‘fantasy’ rather than a crude attempt at marketing!). The exact date of composition is uncertain, but the music was published in 1976, the year of his sudden death in Cape Town during one of his examination trips.

As a young composer in the 1920s, Henri Sauguet developed a friendship with Joseph Canteloube, with whom he travelled collecting folk songs, some of which were used in Canteloube’s Chants d’Auvergne (‘Songs of the Auvergne’). He also forged links with Darius Milhaud and Erik Satie, and studied composition in Paris with Charles Koechlin. Sauguet wrote this brief and delightfully wistful Barcarolle in 1936, when he was completing work on his third opera, La Chartreuse de Parme. Bassoon and harp is a lovely combination—one that deserves much more repertoire.

It often creates a special link when a composer writes music for a specific player. Gordon Jacob, a prolific composer of music for all wind instruments, wrote a bassoon concerto for Archie Camden in 1947, which was first performed by Camden at a Henry Wood Promenade Concert in August that year, with Sir Adrian Boult conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Twenty years later, Jacob’s inspiration was the bassoonist William Waterhouse, for whom he wrote this quintet, plus the Partita for unaccompanied bassoon. The quintet was commissioned by the Cheltenham Festival, written in 1968 and first performed the following year at Cheltenham Town Hall by Waterhouse and his colleagues in the Melos Ensemble. Its four movements explore a range of moods—a reflective prelude, a lively athleticism in the caprice, an elegy full of pathos, and a cheeky, light-hearted rondo to finish with.

Like Gordon Jacob, Jean-Michel Damase (1928-2013) created many fine works for wind players during his long career as a composer. He was also a conductor and a distinguished pianist, studying with the legendary concert pianist Alfred Cortot, and at the Paris Conservatoire. Later in life he won the Grand Prix du Disque for his recording of piano music by Fauré. Automne is one of his shorter pieces, with a reflective solo line for bassoon and delicious piano harmonies.

Born in Albania in 1958, Thomas Simaku is now a British citizen, and is Professor of Composition at the University of York. He moved to the UK in 1991, and this Andante and Scherzo was one of the first pieces he wrote in Britain, composed for the Yorkshire bassoonists who befriended and supported him at that time. Although entirely original, the music is imbued with the modal and often spicy language of Albanian folk melodies, with very distinct harmonies and rhythms. Simaku admits that since then his compositional style has changed significantly, but this folk-inspired gem, beautifully voiced with superb use of the instrument’s resonances and colours, remains a very special work in the bassoon ensemble repertoire.

As a conductor, pianist and prolific composer, Joseph Holbrooke (1878-1958) led a full and eventful life, with many high-profile performances of his works in the earlier part of his career. Sadly, the popularity of his music waned later in the twentieth century, and despite the best efforts of his son, the virtuoso bassoonist Gwydion Brooke, to promote his father’s music, Holbrooke’s works are only rarely performed nowadays. His waltz ‘Souvenir’ began life as one of a set of six pieces for cello and piano dating from 1906, to which a version for bassoon (and piano) was further added, and later edited by his son Gwydion. This music has a delightful elegance and charm that one often associates with the lighter repertoire from the early part of the twentieth century.

Born in York in 1953, Robin Walker has studied many different musical languages and cultures, ranging from composition lessons with Anthony Milner and David Lumsdaine to a period in India where he was inspired by Buddhist temple music. Since the late 1980s he has lived in rural parts of Lancashire. In 1999 I commissioned Robin to write a solo piece as the final work in a concert programme I was putting together—a musical exploration of the British Isles. The destination was the English Lake District, and his music evokes not only the beauty and tranquillity of the lakes and mountains in that region, but also the energy and drama of that imposing landscape at dusk. In concert performances, I precede the work with four lines from An evening walk by the nineteenth-century Lakeland poet William Wordsworth:

The song of mountain streams unheard by day,
Now hardly heard, beguiles my homeward way.
All air is, as the sleeping water, still,
List’ning th’ aëreal music of the hill.

Born in Bexhill-on-Sea in 1921, Ruth Gipps quickly emerged as a child prodigy—her first composition, at the age of eight, was instantly snapped up by a music publisher. In 1937 she began composition studies at the Royal College of Music with Gordon Jacob and Ralph Vaughan Williams, alongside Léon Goossens for oboe lessons. It was during her time at the RCM that she wrote Honey-coloured cow. Her prolific output of highly original music (including many fine works for wind instruments) earned her an MBE in 1981. Ruth Gipps clearly had a delightful sense of fun, here creating musical images of a cow gently grazing, trotting round the field—and, of course, a delicious ‘moo’ at the end!

Next in this programme is a delightful trilogy of bassoon quartets, two of which are likely to be well known to British television addicts from the latter half of the twentieth century. The earliest is Ivor the Engine, an animation created in 1959 by Oliver Postgate who asked bassoonist and composer Vernon Elliott to write music for the series, which he himself played on the original soundtrack. This recording is of the signature tune, in a published bassoon-quartet version by Elliott. Rumpole of the Bailey had its first television showing in December 1975. The theme tune by Joseph Horovitz was originally recorded with the rather unusual line-up of two bassoons, cello and contrabassoon. As the cello is optional in the published music edition, we have reverted to an all-bassoon line-up (including the contrabassoon, of course!) which recreates superbly the pompous character of Rumpole as characterized in such a simple and effective way by Horovitz. Finally, we have Pigs—not a television theme, but a present from composer Alan Ridout to his friend Gordon Jacob, who was fascinated by pigs. Ridout appeared with handwritten copies of this music at a summer bassoon course in Canterbury in 1975—I was attending as a student, so I had the chance to play in the first-ever performance, which was given outdoors at St Augustine’s College. It has since become a favourite with bassoon players all over the world!

Darkness at Derwentwater is the second piece of musical imagery on this album inspired by the English Lake District. Derwentwater, located in the northern part of Cumbria, is a beautiful lake surrounded by mountains, with the town of Keswick at its northern point. On a dark night, away from the town, this can be a very moody setting, and my miniature tone poem explores this image in music which is essentially melodic but also sparse and fragile in character.

The fusion of Brazilian folk music and European influences is one of many distinctive features of the music of Heitor Villa-Lobos, widely regarded as the finest composer to emerge from South America. He composed more than 2,000 works in a varied range of styles and for a vast number of instrumental combinations. Ciranda is a game, with its origins in Brazilian folklore—it’s a circle dance, very popular in its home country, especially amongst young children. This ‘circle dance on seven notes’ was composed in 1932/3, and has become a real favourite in the solo bassoon repertoire. The seven notes are presented right at the beginning of the work as an ascending scale in both strings and bassoon. The idea is soon developed, including some spicy harmonies, until a second, slightly quicker section emerges. Its duration is brief, leading us into a slower andante section where the bassoon explores some unusually wide intervals over a lightly textured string accompaniment with solos for viola and cello. This takes us briefly into a very dark place—a bleak bassoon solo line, accompanied only by a double bass ostinato (repeated figure). Eventually, the darkness clears as the full string orchestra takes much of the melodic lead, with quasi-improvisatory arpeggio passages on the bassoon. The warmth and affection in this final section may well reflect the composer’s dedication in the score, to ‘Mindinha’—the name used by Villa-Lobos for Arminda Neves d’Almeida, whom he married in 1936. Clearly, there is a love-song element here.

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