Neglected composers (#1)

 Frank Bridge (1879-1941)

As of this year, my Tuesday evenings are spent at orchestra rehearsals, specifically the City of Southampton Orchestra.  Trying desperately not to look like like a shameless plug, the next concert on 9th April features Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique and Walton's Portsmouth Point Overture. What most delighted me about the programme, however, was the second item of the first half - The Sea by Frank Bridge.

The politics and indeed ethics of attempting to champion a figure whom one feels is unjustly neglected are fraught with dangers, toils and snares, and will almost certainly be dealt with in a future blog post.  Needless to say, I feel confident enough about the merits of Bridge's music to stick my neck out.

Almost every potted biography begins with the line 'Frank Bridge is primarily known for having taught Benjamin Britten...' a cliché whose use is not without justification, for it was Bridge that encouraged Britten's interest in continental avant-gardists such as Schoenberg and Bartok, influences which also found their way into his own music.  In fact, both composers show a distinct development in style as their careers progress, from late Romanticism and Impressionism to full-blown modernism, touching on much else in between.  Britten obviously was sufficiently impressed with his teacher's work to compose the Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge as one of his earliest mature compositions.

I first came across Bridge when choosing pieces for my cello diploma, back in what now seems like very opaque mists of time, and my then teacher suggested playing part of his Sonata for the instrument.  On the strength of this, I not long afterwards purchased a record which featured, amongst other things, The Sea, and was mightily impressed.  Hence my delight at having the chance to play the work in the coming weeks.  The music is obviously a nod to Debussy both in subject and in style, but with sufficient quantities of Wagner and that elusive entity, Englishness, to maintain its originality.  Bridge also happens to be a superb orchestrator, although again with a somewhat different palette to Debussy, something which became immediately apparent when we came to read-through the suite.  The four movements had some of the best cello parts I have ever come across - very playable, interesting and demonstrating a skilful deployment of the section.  This is not to say they were easy (in particular the Alpine Symphony-type chromatic frenzy of the 'Storm' movement, but that is not the point of good orchestration.

As is so often the case, Naxos and other independent record labels have risen to the challenge of providing performances of Bridge's music on disc. Mostly this consists of his chamber and piano music (the majority of his output), but the disc containing The Sea (and possibly his masterpiece, Enter Spring) surveys a sizeable sample of the orchestral music.

Oh, and to add weight to another thesis of mine, Bridge was a viola player.