Frank Bridge - Orchestral Works Vol. 6 (Richard Hickox)

Information

Composer: Frank Bridge

1. Blow out your bugles, for tenor & orchestra
2. Adoration, for tenor & orchestra
3. Where she lies asleep, for tenor & orchestra
4. Love went a-riding, for tenor & orchestra
5. Thy hand in mine, for tenor & orchestra
6. Berceuse, for soprano & orchestra
7. Mantle of blue, for high voice & orchestra
8. Day after day, for mezzo-soprano & orchestra
9. Speak to me, my love, for mezzo-soprano & orchestra
10. Berceuse
11. 3 Morceaux d'orchestre: 2. Chant d'espérance
12. Serenade
13. The Pageant of London, suite for wind orchestra: I. Solemn March "Richard III leaving London"
14. The Pageant of London, suite for wind orchestra: II. First Discoveries: 1. Introduction
15. The Pageant of London, suite for wind orchestra: II. First Discoveries: 2. Pavane
16. The Pageant of London, suite for wind orchestra: II. First Discoveries: 3.La Romanesca [a Galliard]
17. The Pageant of London, suite for wind orchestra: III. March "Heny VIII entering London"
18. A Royal Night of Variety

Sarah Connolly, soprano

Philip Langridge, tenor

BBC National Orchestra of Wales

Richard Hickox, conductor

Date: 2005

Label: Chandos

BBC National Orchestra of Wales

https://www.chandos.net/products/catalogue/CHAN%2010310

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Review

No fewer than 10 first recordings adorn this, the last instalment in Richard Hickox’s valuable Frank Bridge series. Philip Langridge is in ardent voice for the first five tracks, the fourth of which, Love went a-riding, remains the composer’s best-known song. It sounds exhilaratingly new-minted in its sumptuous orchestral garb and is framed here by two companion settings of words by Mary Coleridge, Where she lies asleep (written a month prior to Love went a-riding in April 1914) and Thy hand in mine (completed in February 1917). Particularly striking is the big-scale treatment afforded to Rupert Brooke’s Blow out, you bugles, written in 1918 for the tenor Gervase Elwes and whose incorporation of the Last Post movingly anticipates Bridge’s own towering Oration for cello and orchestra of a dozen years later.

I have almost worn out my vinyl copy of Sarah Walker’s world premiere recording of the haunting and often inspired 1922-24 Tagore diptych for mezzo and orchestra comprising ‘Day after day’ and ‘Speak to me, my love!’ (Pearl, 8/82 – nla). Sarah Connolly all but matches Walker’s eloquence and also excels in the very early Berceuse (a remarkably assured setting of Dorothy Wordsworth from 1901) and affecting Mantle of blue (1918, and orchestrated 16 years later, to words by the Irish poet Padraic Colum).

The programme concludes with five purely instrumental items, the most extended of which is the 1911 suite for wind band, The Pageant of London. Expertly fashioned, it makes for a diverting enough quarter of an hour (the ‘Pavane’ in the middle movement was destined to reappear 15 years later in Warlock’s Capriol Suite), but I can’t say the prospect of a second hearing fills me with any relish. On the other hand, the tuneful Serenade (Bridge’s first published orchestral work from 1903) exudes plenty of sepia-tinted charm, as does the wistful little Berceuse (1901).

Throw in some spick and span orchestral playing from the BBC NOW and Chandos’s commendably natural engineering, not to mention Paul Hindmarsh’s scholarly notes, and you have a job well done. Might Hickox now be persuaded to turn his thoughts to Bridge’s lovely one-act opera, The Christmas Rose?

-- Andrew Achenbach, Gramophone

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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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