Orchestral Works, Volume 2 (Incl Norse Legend)

Best performance available of The Sea
Performance ****
Sound Quality ****
BBC Music Magazine

'The chief work here is the suite The Sea, full of colour and drama, while there's a rarity in the shape of the premiere recording of the Dance Rhapsody of 1908. Excellent recording.'
- The Independent

'…I can't imagine anyone not falling head over heels for the second volume in Richard Hickox's series of orchestral music by Frank Bridge.'
Gramophone Magazine Critic's Choice (2003)

'Excellent orchestral playing, some first-rate annotation by Paul Hindmarsh and characteristically ripe sound from Chandos help to cement a strong recommendation.'
Gramophone

This is the second volume in Richard Hickox's Frank Bridge cycle.

Dance Rhapsody has here been recorded for the first time with its original and exuberant middle section which Bridge cut in later years in preparation for a radio broadcast.

Bridge's music has a devoted following: his colourful, romantic style is haunting, imaginative, exciting and distinctive.

This is the only cycle of Bridge's orchestral music ever undertaken, and is therefore a major addition to the CD catalogue, especially as it includes several premiere recordings.

From his earliest professional years, Bridge harboured the ambition to be a conductor and composer for the orchestra and introduced all but three of his own orchestral works to the public. By insisting that he conduct his own orchestral performances, however, he undoubtedly restricted the much deserved wider dissemination of his work.

Dance Rhapsody is a case in point. Bridge conducted its premiere to considerable acclaim in 1908 and also its next three performances. Then, apart from a single radio broadcast of the work in 1938, it was not heard again until 1977. This exuberant piece consists of three contrasting dances, linked by short transitions and framed by an Allegro energico containing some of Bridge's most confident orchestral gestures.

He composed Five Entr'actes for the production of a play by Emile Cammaerts, basing the music on folk-tunes supplied by the author and using a standard theatre orchestra of the time, but adding three trombones and a harp. The five characteristic movements reveal Bridge as a master of light genre pieces.

Bridge scored his greatest and most lasting success with The Sea. Though all of his orchestral compositions are about something - nature-inspired tone poems such as Enter Spring, war-inspired works like Oration or pieces governed by more elusive 'emotional' programmes, like Dance Poem - The Sea underpins the imagery, emotion and colour with an equally vivid and satisfying musical argument.

Dance Poem (1913) was the first work in which Bridge took a step away from the tuneful and colourful idiom which had served him so well for a decade. The harmonic language is more elusive and ambiguous, the whole-tone scale assuming an increasingly important role in the tonal structure. The work is a symphonic waltz in six closely argued sections and portrays the emotions expressed in a dancer's movements.

PREVIOUS RELEASE:
Bridge - Orchestral Works, Volume 1 - CHAN 9950