Frank Bridge - Orchestral Works Vol. 3 (Richard Hickox)

Information

Composer: Frank Bridge

1. Coronation March
2. Summer, tone poem
3. Phantasm, rhapsody for piano & orchestra
4. There is a Willow Grows Aslant a Brook, impression for small orchestra
5. Vignettes de danse: I. Nicolette
6. Vignettes de danse: II. Zoraida
7. Vignettes de danse: III. Carmelita
8. Sir Roger de Coverley (A Christmas Dance)

Howard Shelley, piano

BBC National Orchestra of Wales

Richard Hickox, conductor

Date: 2003

Label: Chandos

https://www.chandos.net/products/catalogue/CHAN%2010112

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Review

Two first recordings frame the third volume in Richard Hickox’s Frank Bridge series: the darkly opulent Coronation March of 1911 swaggers with a glinting defiance – and what a treat to encounter the inventive and witty Sir Roger de Coverley in its alternative guise for full orchestra (the October 1922 première under Henry Wood was a great success). The Vignettes de danse of 1938 stem from a suite for piano that Bridge had sketched 13 years previously after a holiday in the Mediterranean. Immaculately scored for small orchestra, they form a sophisticated 11-minute triptych, whose centrepiece (‘Zoraida’) evinces a sinuous exoticism not far removed from Holst’s Beni Mora or Ibert’s Escales.

In Hickox’s flexible hands, Summer strikes a perceptive balance between idyllic languor and piercing heartache. It’s followed by a long-overdue return to circulation for Phantasm. Completed in 1931, this imposing rhapsody for piano and orchestra inhabits an apprehensive, dream-like world. Howard Shelley is his customarily unruffled self, and Hickox plots a clear-sighted course, though Kathryn Stott and Vernon Handley (Conifer, 1/90 – nla) seem to find more mystery and poetry.

The shadows lengthen further still for There is a willow grows aslant a brook, a poignant, twilit evocation which Hickox drags out to 11'18"; Nicholas Cleobury (Conifer, 9/98 – nla) takes 9'12" and Norman Del Mar 9'19", both without any loss of mournful intensity. It’s the only miscalculation in an otherwise compelling, finely played programme. Once again, Paul Hindmarsh’s authoritative booklet-essay is a boon, as is Chandos’s characteristically ripe sound.

-- Andrew Achenbach, Gramophone

More reviews:
https://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2003/dec03/Bridge3.htm

https://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2004/Jan04/Bridge3.htm

https://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2004/Feb04/Bridge3.htm

https://www.classicalsource.com/cd/frank-bridge-3/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Frank-Bridge-Orchestral-Works-Hybrid/dp/B0000VM3YK

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Frank Bridge (26 February 1879 – 10 January 1941) was an English composer, violist and conductor. He studied at the Royal College of Music under Charles Villiers Stanford and played in a number of string quartets, before devoting himself to composition. Being a strong pacifist, Bridge was deeply disturbed by the First World War, and his works during the war and immediately afterwards appeared to search for spiritual consolation. As a teacher, Bridge privately taught Benjamin Britten, who later championed his teacher's music and paid homage to him in the Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge (1937).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Bridge

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Richard Hickox (5 March 1948 – 23 November 2008) was an English conductor of choral, orchestral and operatic music. He studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London, then was an organ scholar at Queens' College, Cambridge. Hickox founded the City of London Sinfonia, as well as the Richard Hickox Singers and Orchestra, in 1971. He was Chorus Director of the London Symphony Chorus (1976 to 1991), Artistic Director of the Northern Sinfonia (1982 to 1990), Principal Conductor of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales (2000 to 2006), and Music Director of Opera Australia (2005 to 2008).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Hickox

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