Orchestral Works, Volume 1 (Includes Mid of the Night & Two Poems for Orchestra)

"A fascinating revealing disc - and one which happens to be very enjoyable, too. Richard Hickox and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales are first-rate champions in all these pieces. The recordings are every bit as good as the musicianship deserves."
***** Five Stars (Pick of the Month) BBC Music Magazine (Jan 2002)

'...this is a very good disc indeed - a fine start to an important project. Further helpings are eagerly awaited.'
Gramophone

"An absorbing first volume in Hickox's new Frank Bridge series for Chandos."
- Gramophone February 2002

Chandos introduces the first in a series of recordings featuring works by Frank Bridge.

This disc contains the premiere recording of Mid of the Night, a major work more 25 minutes long.

The series features the now exclusive partnership of Chandos artist Richard Hickox and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. Richard Hickox has long been regarded as a leading exponent of British music.

Frank Bridge is much admired for his tuneful chamber music, which was described by Benjamin Britten as being 'easy on the ear and grateful to play'. However, Bridge was also an orchestral composer of distinction as this disc demonstrates.

Bridge's masterly Rhapsody Enter Spring was written to a commission from the Norfolk and Norwich 1927 Triennial Festival. At the height of his creative powers, Bridge's inspiration for the piece was the wild and windy spring of the Sussex Downs surrounding his country cottage. The energy and motivic detail of the fast music contrasts vividly with the grandeur found in the sweeping phrases of the central 'pastoral' melody. This melody is contained in an episode which opens with a wonderfully evocative sequence of 'bird song' over some magical harmonies.

Bridge's second Symphonic Poem, Isabella, was first performed at a Promenade Concert in 1907. Based on the gruesome Florentine tale by Boccaccio, it is Bridge's only orchestral work to follow such a detailed narrative. Bridge's treatment is richly scored and tightly constructed. Particularly impressive is the way in which he unfolds and combines the two themes associated with the lovers in the story. The final transformation of Isabella's theme into a haunting minor-key lament reveals just how much Bridge learned from Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet.

Bridge conducted the first performance of his Symphonic Poem Mid of the Night in 1904 at London's St James's Hall. The composer was just twenty-four when he wrote this ambitious work of Lisztian proportions - he clearly wanted to demonstrate his skill as a composer and orchestrator.

In 1915 Bridge completed a pair of short tone poems inspired by the evocative writings of the 'nature mystic' Richard Jeffries. The works demonstrate a new complexity of harmony and extended palette of orchestral colours and reveal the influence of composers like Scriabin and Debussy.

Previous recordings from Richard Hickox and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales on Chandos have been highly acclaimed.