Bridge: Piano Quartet, Violin Sonata, Cello Sonata & Other Chamber Works

Featuring

Ian Brown
Marianne Thorsen
Lawrence Power
Paul Watkins
Laura Samuel
Nash Ensemble

Frank Bridge

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Composition History

Frank Bridge, the composer, was invited to contribute the first movement to a collective string quartet based on 'The Londonderry Air' in 1908.

Composer Biography

Financial help from American patron Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge in 1923 allowed Frank Bridge to stop teaching and playing, enabling him to focus solely on composition.

Performer Biography

The Nash Ensemble, the performers on this album, is the Resident Chamber Ensemble at London's Wigmore Hall and has won The Royal Philharmonic Society's small ensemble award twice.

Compositional Technique

The Phantasie competitions, promoted by Walter Wilson Cobbett, aimed to establish a new British chamber music genre combining elements of a standard chamber work into a single span, inspired by Elizabethan and Jacobean Fancies for viols.

Composer's Artistic Vision

Frank Bridge believed that any expression of national spirit in music must come from the composer's own inspiration, not from a deliberate effort to aim at national expression.

Critical Reception

Frank Bridge's Violin Sonata received a hostile critical reception at its premiere in 1934, with one critic describing it as 'tortured' and lacking spontaneity.