Bridge: Phantasy / String Quartets Nos. 2 And 4

Description

Frank Bridge (1879-1941)String Quartet No. 2 Phantasy Quartet String Quartet No. 4Frank Bridge studied violin and composition at theRoyal College of Music where he was a pupil ofStanford from 1899 to 1903. Apart from composition,his career embraced performance (he was the violist inseveral quartets, most notably the English StringQuartet), conducting (he frequently deputised for SirHenry Wood), and teaching (Britten being his bestknownpupil). Perhaps no other British composer of thefirst half of the century reveals such a stylistic journeyin his music. His early works, such as the First StringQuartet (1906), the Phantasy Piano Trio (1907) and theorchestral suite The Sea (1910-11), follow in the late-Romantic tradition bearing a kinship with Faure;subsequently, in the orchestral tone poem Summer(1914-5), for instance, Bridge comes close to the orbitof Delius. After the First World War, however, hismusic became intense and chromatic as in theScriabinesque Piano Sonata (1921-4). The radicallanguage of the sonata was pursued in his chamberworks of the 1920s, so that in the Third String Quartet(1926) Bridge rubs shoulders with the early works ofthe Second Viennese School. Also to this decade belongtwo orchestral masterpieces, Enter Spring (1927) andOration (1930). Finding little favour with public orcritics his late work, for example the Fourth StringQuartet (1934-8), languished, and despite Britten'sadvocacy it was not until the 1970s that Bridge'sremarkable legacy received the attention it deserved.At the outset of his career Bridge established hisname through a series of chamber works in which hedemonstrated impeccable craftsmanship and a whollyidiomatic understanding of string instruments, with theviola, his own main instrument, frequently havingprominence. A further influence on the form of theseworks was the prizes instituted by Walter WilsonCobbett, an amateur musician whose interests werechamber music and the period of the Elizabethan andJacobean composers. In particular Cobbett wasinterested in the instrumental 'fantasy' or 'phantasy'form of that time in which several unrelated but variedsections formed the basis for an extended work. In 1905he established a prize for chamber compositions in onemovement and Bridge submitted several works forCobbett's competitions, winning first prize in 1907 and1915. What was significant though was that Bridgeadapted aspects of the phantasy form within subsequentcompositions, so that thematic unity within a work ofone or several movements became a hallmark of hiscompositions.The Second String Quartet was composed in 1914-15 in response to Cobbett's fourth competition for thebest string quartet in either sonata form, suite orphantasy form. Entries were finally divided into thosewho wrote sonatas and those who wrote phantasies,with Bridge's quartet winning the former. The LondonString Quartet gave the premi?¿re in 1915 and the quartetmay be heard as a transitional work between Bridge'searly and later styles;