Bridge: String Quartets Nos. 1 and 3

Frank Bridge (Artist), Maggini Quartet (Artist) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (October 21, 2003)
• SPARS Code: DDD
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Naxos
• ASIN: B0000BX5K4
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #185,741 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Perhaps no other British composer of the first half of the twentieth century reveals a stylistic musical journey as great as Frank Bridge. His early works follow in the late-Romantic tradition bearing a kinship with Fauré; later Bridge comes close to Delius. After the First World War, however, his music became intense and chromatic. In his String Quartet No. 3 (1926), Bridge rubs shoulders with the early works of the Second Viennese School. Commissioned by the American patroness Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, it fully revealed for the first time Bridge’s advanced mature voice. The work’s language shows kinship with Berg and Bartók; the twelve semitones are constantly in play; octave doublings are avoided, and the music is driven by a relentless momentum. Bridge’s First String Quartet was written in haste in the space of a month in response to a competition organized by the Accademia Filarmonica, Bologna. Of the 67 quartets submitted only Bridge’s received a ‘mention d’honneur’.

Customer Reviews

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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars the contrasting faces of Frank Bridge, February 20, 2010

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jsa (San Diego, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Bridge: String Quartets Nos. 1 and 3 (Audio CD)

Frank Bridge's first string quartet (1906), written in one month to meet the submission deadline for a music competition, is an inventive and appealing minor chamber masterpiece. Bridge, who studied violin and viola, wrote adeptly for strings - in my opinion, his chamber music is far and away his best work. The first quartet, twenty-nine minutes in this performance by the outstanding Maggini Quartet, holds your interest from the opening bars, is filled with good ideas, and is serious without ever being heavy. In short, an immensely rewarding piece of music.

The less accessible third quartet, which dates from considerably later in Bridge's career (1925-6), reflects a different aspect of the composer. Here lyricism has largely been replaced by agitation and dissonance; the Great War had had its effect as too had the atonal style of the Second Viennese School. While the Third is quite different than one might expect from the composer of the lovely (and substantial) Phantasie Quartet, I think it's overstatement to say, as one biographer did, that "From the end of the war to the end of the 1930s, Bridge gradually pitched into a world of night music, sour fanfares, Gehennas of the psyche, despairing dreams, bitterly grim marches and negation." In fact, I recommend listening to the third and fourth quartets without any preconceived notions or programs in mind. There's much to appreciate here.