I have already given
this CD as a present to one of my friends.
A couple of other acquaintances have
been earmarked for receiving their copy.
To my mind this is possibly one of the
best introductions to Frank Bridge’s
music that is available on the market.
This applies to the quality of the recording,
the stature of the playing and the repertoire.
Even the cover is a fine painting by
Henry Moore – the seascape painter,
not the sculptor! My only contention
is one or two unseemly remarks in the
programme notes. But perhaps more about
that later?
I must confess to being
a big Bridge fan. I will admit I am
more at home with his music than that
of his illustrious pupil, Benjamin Britten.
In fact, I would almost go as far to
say that he was in the top five of my
favourite English composers. However,
I always baulk at making this list as
it seems to change from year to year
and sometimes even day to day.
So why is it such a
good introduction? Well apart from the
quality of the playing and recording
it represents an excellent cross-section
of the composer’s music. It effectively
straddles Bridge’s personal artistic
hiatus; a hiatus that was a result of
the Great War.
Let’s present the works
in chronological order. The Sea -
Suite (1911), Summer (1914-15),
Two Poems (1915) and Enter
Spring (1927). We can immediately
see that the two middle works were composed
during the early days of the war. The
Sea was at the high point of the
Edwardian era and the Enter Spring
composed some nine years after the conclusion
of hostilities but in a world that was
economically troubled and beginning
to see the first signs of political
trouble that would lead to the Second
World War.
First of all I want
to dispel the notion that The Sea
is in some way an English response to
Debussy’s La Mer. It is not.
Of course it could be argued that the
music is an evocation of the sea and
an impressionistic one at that. But
if you play the two works back to back
one will notice the difference. Bridge
uses and develop themes. Whereas, I
believe, that the Debussy is more driven
by motifs.
There are four movements,
all of which lend to the magic of this
impressive tone poem. Let Bridge’s words
give us some idea of the mood evoked
in this score:-
"Seascape
paints the sea on a summer morning.
From high drifts is seen a great
expanse of waters lying in the sunlight.
Warm breezes play over the surface.
Sea-foam froths among the
low-lying rocks and pools on the
shore, playfully not stormy. Moonlight,
a calm sea at night. The first moonbeams
are struggling to pierce through
the clouds, which eventually pass
over, leaving the sea shimmering
in full moonlight. Finally a raging
Storm. Wind, rain and tempestuous
seas, with the lulling of the storm
an allusion to the first number
is heard and which may be regarded
as a sea lover’s dedication to the
sea."
The young Benjamin
Britten was totally bowled over when
he first heard this work performed at
a Norwich Triennial Festival concert
in 1924. He was particularly impressed
with the ‘sensuous harmonies’ in the
Moonlight movement.
It is perhaps interesting
to note that Frank Bridge composed much
of this music in Eastbourne, with the
seascape of the English Channel in view.
Strangely it was at an hotel in the
same town that Debussy put the final
touches to his masterpiece.
Incidentally, I was
interested to note on the Arkiv CD web
site that there are some 109 recordings
of Debussy’s La Mer compared
to six of the work by Bridge.
The tone poem, Summer
must rank as one of my all-time favourites.
It would certainly feature as one of
my desert island discs. I understand
that it was composed whilst the composer
was living in Bedford Gardens in Kensington.
However, he had recently (1914) moved
from Chiswick. It was at a time when
the composer was extremely disturbed
by the effect the war was having on
the lives of his friends. Of course,
Bridge was too old to be involved in
the fighting himself; besides he was
an unrepentant pacifist. He was troubled
by the apparent jingoism that was in
the air at that time. Rather than write
a ‘troubled’ work depicting in musical
terms the clash of the Titans, he resorted
to a kind of escapism. It is in this
context that we are to listen to Summer
and also the Two Poems which
were composed at about this time.
It would be easy to
see Summer as a kind of parody
of Delius. However, it is actually a
cleverly constructed work having an
obvious ternary form. Of course the
skill that the composer brings with
his orchestration and harmonic structures
tends to blur the underlying structure.
This is one of those pieces of music
that need to be listened to with a kind
of relaxed concentration. By this I
mean that it is not to be listened to
in the background whilst discussing
the holiday snaps over a glass of Chianti.
Neither, though, should it be an intellectual
exercise. Switch off the light, open
the window, think of your lover, enjoy
the cool evening breeze and just fall
into the delicious harmonies and counterpoints.
Let the music wash over you. Lose yourself
in the summer’s day haze. Think of Matthew
Arnold’s evocative lines ‘All the live
murmur of a summer’s day!’ It is nine
minutes and forty seconds of heaven.
There is plenty of time to evaluate
and analyse next morning.
Frank Bridge must have
the final word. He is quoted as saying
in a letter to his wife, ‘…only if there
is such a thing as rest in the soul
of the listener and in the sweetness
of a summer day faraway in the heart
of the country will my piece Summer
make any impression.’ It does, and always
has, blown me over.
The other works from
this period also deserve our attention.
They are based on the now largely forgotten
writings of Richard Jefferies. Amongst
many other things, he essayed on life
in the English countryside. He was a
nature mystic. Perhaps his philosophy
is best summed up by the quotation 'The
sun was stronger than science; the hills
more than philosophy.'
The first of the two
poems is scored for a small orchestra
and has the following written on the
manuscript from The Open Air,
a book written in 1885, ‘Those thoughts
and feelings which are not sharply defined,
but have a haze of distance and beauty
about them, are always dearest.’ Paul
Hindmarsh well describes this miniature
as a ‘restrained essay in veiled sonority,
sensuous chromaticism and ambivalent
tonality.’ It is not quite pastoralism,
but comes close. The use of oboe and
muted strings lend credence to this
impression.
The second poem is
in fact a little scherzo. Unlike the
first, it has parts for brass and percussion.
It differs, too in the fact that this
poem is actually harmonically obvious
and the formal structure is much more
up-front. It is more extrovert in its
tone. Bridge has applied Jefferies’
words from The Story of my Heart
to the score, "How beautiful a
delight to make the world joyous! The
song should never be silent, the dance
never still, the laugh should sound
like water which runs for ever."
Once again let me put
my cards on the table. I believe that
Bridge’s masterpiece is Enter Spring.
Furthermore, I believe it is perhaps
the finest tone poem in the repertoire
of British music. Now that is fulsome
praise indeed!
This work is the latest
on this disc. It was composed twelve
years after the Two Poems. In
spite of its ‘Georgian’ title, there
is no way that it could be described
as a purely pastoral piece. It is not
a cow leaning over a gate. However there
is a pastoral element to it that is,
as Rob Barnett has said, ‘tempered with
the more serious stirrings of his more
avant-garde style.’
The background to this
work lies in the beautiful Sussex Downs.
Although Bridge’s life centred on London
he was able to spend much time in his
native county. In the nineteen-twenties
Bridge and his wife built a house, Friston
Field, near West Dean. It overlooked
a large panorama of the Downs. We have
already noted how the sea had influenced
Bridge; I have always imagined that
it was the English Channel that provided
the inspiration for The Sea.
The Downs were to provide the backdrop
to Enter Spring. Originally it
was to have been called On Friston
Down but the name was abandoned.
It would be easy to
play ‘spot the influence’ with this
piece. There are perhaps echoes of Stravinsky’s
Rite of Spring or perhaps Arnold
Bax’s Spring Fire. The Editor
alludes to John Foulds’ great but neglected
work April-England. Ravel and
Debussy and perhaps even Alban Berg
are never far from the mind. But Bridge
is actually beholden to no man. What
we have is a synthesis of all that he
had written up to 1927. This is not
the place to analyse the nuts and bolts
of this work. It is the forum
to pile up the adjectives. This work
is rich in development, subtle in its
remarkable scoring. There is a superabundance
of invention and imagination here –
from the first to the last bar. There
is a ‘formal mastery’ that makes this
work a paragon of its type. It is sunny,
turbulent, colourful, exuberant and
melancholic all in the space of twenty
minutes. At the end of the work Spring
is truly ushered in. Would that I were
on the Sussex Downs at Chanctonbury
or Firle Beacon or West Dean to see
it!
My only reservation
is the programme notes. I do
wish that Keith Anderson would give
a Bridge a bit more credit for being
appreciated by the cognoscenti. He writes,
‘[Bridge] now generally regarded as
the teacher of Benjamin Britten.’ My
contention is simple. If someone is
knowledgeable enough to know that Bridge
taught Britten they are surely knowledgeable
enough to realise that Bridge was a
great and accomplished composer in his
own right. And secondly, I do not regard
the fact that Bridge was a pupil of
Stanford at the Royal College of Music
as ‘conventional and restrictive training
for a composer.’ I consider Stanford
to be a fine and underrated composer
in his own right; there is nothing dry
as dust about his Second Piano Concerto
or his Requiem. He was also
as a fine teacher. Just take a look
at his list of pupils: Ralph Vaughan
Williams, Gustav Holst, Herbert Howells,
George Butterworth, E.J. Moeran, Arthur
Bliss, and Percy
Grainger. I rest my case.
I reiterate my opening
contention. This is a fine introduction
to the orchestral music of Frank Bridge.
Of course there are other versions of
these works available. Recordings by
Britten, Sir Charles Groves and the
complete series of orchestral music
by Richard Hickox. But what the Naxos
disc gives is a fine sequence of recordings
by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra
under their chief conductor James Judd.
The CD presents an excellent introduction
to the repertoire of this great yet
still largely neglected British composer.
John France
See also review
by Rob Barnett
New Zealand SO/James Judd 