Bridge: The Sea / Enter Spring / Summer

Description

Frank Bridge (1879-1941)Orchestral MusicNow generally remembered as the teacher of Benjamin Britten,who made his gratitude clear in his variations on a theme by his mentor, FrankBridge has been largely neglected as a composer until recent years. Born inBrighton in 1879, he was a pupil of Stanford at the Royal College of Music inLondon, a conventional and restrictive training for a composer. His principalstudy, however, was the violin, which he had played from childhood, assistinghis father, who conducted the Empire Theatre orchestra in Brighton. Heestablished himself as a conductor and viola player, in the latter capacityreplacing an indisposed member of the Joachim Quartet during the latter's 1906visit to London. In a remarkably busy career he served as violist in theEnglish String Quartet, an ensemble that reduced its public schedule after1915, and undertook conducting engagements for the 1910-1911 Savoy Theatreopera season and for Covent Garden in 1913, also deputising for Henry Wood atthe London Promenade Concerts, as occasion demanded. Further opportunitiesarose from his ability to master a score quickly, so that he won a reputaton asa particularly reliable substitute for any otherwise indisposed conductor.Bridge's early compositions included a quantity of chambermusic. He won the Cobbett Prize for his 1907 Phantasy Piano Trio. In the firstcompetition, in 1905, he had taken third place, after William Hurlstone andHaydn Wood, and there were two later works that followed for the awards offeredby Cobbett. In the same period he wrote a quantity of songs and piano pieces.This stage of his career as a composer culminated in 1911 with the completionof the orchestral suite The Sea. This was followed in 1914 by a tone poem, Summer,and the following year Two Poems of Richard Jefferies. A pacifist, Bridge hadinevitably been appalled by the atrocities of war, and these war-timecompositions may be heard as an escape into a kinder world. In the 1920s hiswork underwent a change, moving with his Piano Sonata, completed in 1924, into anew world that was much less English in character, reflecting in particular hisinterest in the music of Alban Berg, a composer with whom his own pupil Brittenhad planned to study. The patronage of Elisabeth Sprague Coolidge brought aninterest in his work in the United States, where he conducted his ownorchestral works and was able to take some delight in the performances of hischamber music. Enter Spring, completed in 1927, belongs to this later phase ofBridge's career, when his work seemed out of kilter with prevailing insularEnglish musical conventions. Bridge died in 1941, in the second year of anotherwar, leaving unfinished a symphony on which he was working.Bridge wrote his Two Poems in 1915, drawing inspiration fromthe writings of Richard Jefferies on the life of the English countryside. Thefirst of the two, scored for woodwind, horns, timpani, harp and strings, has asuperscription from The Open Air, a book written in 188