Bridge - Piano Sonata; I (Part 1/2)

First movement from the Piano Sonata (1921-24)

According to Andrew Burn "As a pacifist of deep conviction Bridge was scarred by the misery caused by World War I. It is known that he was so distressed by the news from the battlefields that he would wander the streets by himself at night, mulling over the carnage. Furthermore his response to the war also seems to have triggered a stylistic crisis in his music, and a need to develop a more radical harmonic voice to express himself. The first major manifestation of this new style was his most important solo work for piano, the Sonata...

The Piano Sonata was composed between Easter 1921 and May 1924, and since Harold Samuel, the pianist Bridge initially had in mind to give the première, found it bewildering, its first performance was played by Myra Hess on 15 October 1925 at the Wigmore Hall. Bridge dedicated the sonata to the memory of his composer friend, Ernest Bristow Farrar, who had been killed in action in 1918 aged 33. It was the first of Bridge's works to receive a mauling by the critical fraternity: for instance The Daily Telegraph reviewer felt it was 'inclined to dourness throughout', whilst in The Morning Post it was dismissed as a 'disappointment'.

The characteristics of Bridge's late style are foreshadowed in the sonata. There is dissonance arising from bi-tonal and intensely chromatic harmony; the phrase structure differs from the smoothness of his earlier music, reflecting the more complex harmony, with balanced musical sentences replaced by phrases of varied lengths; lastly there are rapidly alternating changes of mood and intensity. What is also manifest throughout is a technical mastery in his command of the overall formal structure and in his writing for the instrument.

The first movement is cast in sonata form, and like many of Bridge's works it begins with a slow introduction in which the germs of the entire work are introduced, then subsequently developed by an organic process. Here there are two main ideas: the first a brooding processional that grows from a repeated note, with ominous doom-laden chords below; the second a consoling melodic phrase, quintessentially Bridge in character, marked by a grace note. The latter may be thought of as a motto theme since allusions are made to it in all three movements. Harmonically the music is ambiguous in its tonality and frequently bi-tonal which adds to the tension of the fast music that now erupts. As it lurches from one climax to another, amidst the evident anguish and pain, moments of solace and consolation based on the motto theme fleetingly appear, but time and again the battle is rejoined until the processional finally reappears as at the opening, but now with the repeated notes hammered out fortississimo as if in railing despair, before a fast coda halts the movement tersely."

Among the vanguard of early 20th-century English composers, Frank Bridge (1879-1941) was a remarkable music figure and counted Benjamin Britten his greatest pupil. Bridge never settled on a compositional style or niche, and constantly explored different aesthetics. He began as a proponent of late German Romanticism when he studied composition with Charles Stanford at the Royal College of Music. His earliest piano music consists of typical, though substantive, salon pieces. In the mid-1910s, he dabbled in writing impressionist-tinged works redolent of Faure and Delius. However, after World War I, his musical language shifted dramatically. The war had a huge impact on his pysche and he quickly embraced hyper-chromaticism and even the Scriabinesque. Still unsatisfied, Bridge made a final stylistic excursion into atonality and the Second Viennese School, which utterly confused his conservative friends and audiences. After his death, Bridge was rarely championed except by his outstanding pupil, Britten, and remained relatively forgotten until the late 1970s.

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Music

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• scriabin

[marcohorowitz8]

Who is the pianist?????????

[rugby52732]

And the pianist is Jacobs or.... ? Thanks.

[1234cottagedoor]

I used to buy completely into the theory that World War I made Bridge abandon the sweetness of his earlier style for something bleaker. I'm not now convinced this is the whole truth, although clearly he was appalled at the carnage. But so were other composers, and they didn't move in the same direction as Bridge. He wanted to develop stylistically anyway and serialism was a big influence. He also felt the ache of childlessness and maybe that comes through in his writing.

[lsbrother]

Hi, good stuff but could you explain the numbering:

I (part 1/2) first movement

I part(2/2) first movement

III final movement

Does III mean that the 'final' is the third movement - if so where is II - the second?

[trist105]

One of my favorite piano sonatas of all time, I never understood why it was so overlooked. Never seen the score before, really happy you posted it!

[dreampoets]

this is an intriguing work of full pianistic writing! ..I'm very excited you posted this..what a great discovery

[KeithWhalen11]

Wonderful upload, it does have a very Scriabinesque sound in some places. I love the part at 7:30 onwards.

[skryabyn]

yesyesyes i love this peice i found it in my library like a year ago in a cd "piano music of frank bridge" awesome