Bridge Piano Works
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Frank Bridge
Label: Classics
Magazine Review Date: 9/1991
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 72
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: CDCF186
Tracks:
| Composition | Artist Credit |
|---|---|
| Capriccio No. 1 |
Frank Bridge, Composer
Frank Bridge, Composer Kathryn Stott, Piano |
| Capriccio No. 2 |
Frank Bridge, Composer
Frank Bridge, Composer Kathryn Stott, Piano |
| (A) Sea Idyll |
Frank Bridge, Composer
Frank Bridge, Composer Kathryn Stott, Piano |
| Vignettes de Marseille |
Frank Bridge, Composer
Frank Bridge, Composer Kathryn Stott, Piano |
| (The) Hour Glass |
Frank Bridge, Composer
Frank Bridge, Composer Kathryn Stott, Piano |
| Sonata |
Frank Bridge, Composer
Frank Bridge, Composer Kathryn Stott, Piano |
| (3) Poems, Movement: Ecstasy |
Frank Bridge, Composer
Frank Bridge, Composer Kathryn Stott, Piano |
Author:
The Cezanne painting—L'etang des soeurs a Osny—reproduced on the front of the booklet which accompanies this recording is an appropriate choice. There is a French impressionism about Frank Bridge's early piano works that is the musical equivalent of this kind of painting. Yet, as with the latter, there is also a modernism, a looking forward, a sense of change, that makes what we hear (or see) so much more than a first hearing (or viewing) might suggest.
Peter Jacobs's three volumes of recordings of all Bridge's piano music for Continuum/Harmonia Mundi ((CD) CCD1016, 9/90; CCD1018/9, 5/91) have set a high standard. But there is always room for alternatives, especially for such a sensitive performer as Kathryn Stott. Drawing on her knowledge and understanding of Faure, she imparts interpretative grace and structural cogency to such early pieces as Bridge's Capriccios and Sea Idyll, while her playing of the Vignettes de Marseille, composed in 1925 after a holiday Bridge took with his patron Mrs Coolidge, is sheer delight. The colour and exuberance of these genre sketches are irresistible. They are performed here in an edition by Paul Hindmarsh which incorporates additions by Bridge when he made orchestral transcriptions of three of the four pieces.
The looking-forward I mentioned above is evident in The Hour Glass of 1920. Titles like ''The Midnight Tide'' and ''Dusk'' suggest picturesque salon pieces, but what we hear is allusive, fragmentary, wraith-like. With the big sonata of 1925, Bridge moved to the verge of atonal expressionism to give vent to his horror of war. Jacobs's may be a tougher performance, but Stott's is profoundly introspective and moving. The breadth and splendour of her playing, particularly in the searing slow movement, are captured vividly by Conifer's recording.'
Peter Jacobs's three volumes of recordings of all Bridge's piano music for Continuum/Harmonia Mundi ((CD) CCD1016, 9/90; CCD1018/9, 5/91) have set a high standard. But there is always room for alternatives, especially for such a sensitive performer as Kathryn Stott. Drawing on her knowledge and understanding of Faure, she imparts interpretative grace and structural cogency to such early pieces as Bridge's Capriccios and Sea Idyll, while her playing of the Vignettes de Marseille, composed in 1925 after a holiday Bridge took with his patron Mrs Coolidge, is sheer delight. The colour and exuberance of these genre sketches are irresistible. They are performed here in an edition by Paul Hindmarsh which incorporates additions by Bridge when he made orchestral transcriptions of three of the four pieces.
The looking-forward I mentioned above is evident in The Hour Glass of 1920. Titles like ''The Midnight Tide'' and ''Dusk'' suggest picturesque salon pieces, but what we hear is allusive, fragmentary, wraith-like. With the big sonata of 1925, Bridge moved to the verge of atonal expressionism to give vent to his horror of war. Jacobs's may be a tougher performance, but Stott's is profoundly introspective and moving. The breadth and splendour of her playing, particularly in the searing slow movement, are captured vividly by Conifer's recording.'
Bridge Piano Works
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