Frank Bridge - Complete Piano Music Vols 1, 2 and 3

Frank Bridge 

Complete Music for Piano Vols.1, 2 & 3

Peter Jacobs

Reviews:

What a wealth of unknown treasure this splendid disc contains. I can only hope that lots of pianists will buy it and be persuaded to include some of Frank Bridge's genre pieces in their recitals. Peter Jacobs is a convinced advocate of this music and plays it with affection and insight as well as, of course, consummate technical skill.

This disc—Vol. I of the complete music for piano—does not contain the tremendous Sonata of 1923-4, but the works Jacobs has included range from 1905 to 1928. They represent, therefore, the early 'romantic' Bridge and the more ascetic post-1918 Bridge, his whole creative world affected by the First World War, which he abominated. Thus, in pieces like "Retrospect" and "Through the Eaves" from In Autumn, composed in 1924, the harmonic idiom is more complex and radical, the tonality less clearly defined. Throughout all these piano pieces a French influence is detectable, and one feels that Debussy, had he lived, might have composed in a style and mood similar to Bridge's.

The earlier pieces have a harmonic clarity that removes any risk of their cloying. They are a world away from Bax's hot-house, for example. The Sea Mvii of 1905 is a particularly fetching example of Bridge's style at that period. Great charm, too, may be experienced in his Fairy Tale Suite of 1917—an English Ma mere l'oye—and the first set of Miniature Pastorals, also 1917, composed for children. Here there is a kinship with Elgar who also fled from the horrible realities of the world of 1917 into an escapist wand of youth. Oddly, the second set of Pastorals, composed in 1921, has lost its innocence—the postwar disillusion touches some of these delightful pieces with frost. The effect is infinitely poignant.

The war is remembered, too, in Three Improvisationsfor the Left Hand, composed in 1918, not of course for Paul Wittgenstein, but for an English pianist Douglas Fox, who had lost his right arm. Quite apart from their intrinsic value as music, they are notable examples of Bridge's skill as a keyboard composer. The most 'advanced' pieces on the disc are A Dedication, tonally wayward and emotionally enigmatic, and Gargoyle of 1928. The latter was the last piano piece Bridge wrote. It was rejected by his publisher, presumably because it was regarded as too dissonant and 'difficult'. Peter Jacobs restores this remarkable piece to us in an edition by Paul Hindmarsh. This beautifully recorded recital is highly recommended. Beware, however, of the timings given on the jewel case; they are inaccurate in several cases. M. K.

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Peter Jacobs here completes his3 Cds invaluable survey on Continuum of all Frank Bridge's piano music, begun with Vol. I ((D CCD 1016, 9/90). Volume 3 ends with a magnificent performance of Bridge's greatest and most important work for the instrument, the Sonata of 1921-4 which he composed in memory of the composer Ernest Farrar, who was killed in action in France in 1917. It is also one of Bridge's most important works in any genre, for his agony over the carnage and horror of the First World War led to the radical harmonic changes in his music which placed him far ahead of most of his British contemporaries and caused him to be regarded almost as an outcast. Its first performance was given by Myra Hess, a courageous act by that admirable artist.

Today its difficulties for the listener have largely melted away and will appear to most people to have been exaggerated. In structure, it clearly still belongs to the tradition of Liszt's B minor Sonata, and although its harmonies are sometimes gritty, there is nothing here to alarm anyone who has come to terms with Berg. Calum MacDonald, in his invaluable notes for these recordings, identifies the technical features which give the Sonata its special character: "melodic and harmonic use of seconds, sevenths, tritones and ninths, the superimposition of fourths and fifths, and the creation of complex chords by the combination of orthodox but tenuously related triads".

That may sound formidable on paper, but the music emerges as dramatic, strong, continuously stimulating and, in the central elegy, deeply moving. The finale, a march, is bitter and angry and anticipates similar treatments of this rhythm by Britten and Shostakovich. I have nothing but praise for Peter Jacobs's elegant performance, recorded with absolute fidelity.

Otherwise the two discs under review contain mainly the short genre pieces that Bridge wrote throughout his composing life and which justify comparisons with late Brahms and, even more, with Faure. Several of them point the way to the Sonata, for example "Ecstasy", the third of the

Three Poems of 1913-14, and others post-date it, like the curious "Hedgerow" (Three Lyrics) of 1924.

Those familiar with Bridge's orchestral music will find here his piano transcription of the Lament for strings he composed in 1915 in memory of a nine-year-old drowned with her family when the Lusitania was sunk by a U-boat in May of that year. I wonder how many pianists know of its existence and how many will now add this poignant and lovely music to their repertoires?