Search - Martin Roscoe, Maggini Quartet :: Bridge: String Quartets 2 & 4 / Phantasy Piano Quartet

Great introduction to a neglected master at a GREAT price

Mark Shanks | Portland, OR | 05/09/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"There are many virtues of this CD, but perhaps the greatest is the breadth of exposure to Bridge's music at such a terrific price. The Phantasy is very reminiscent of the Brahms piano trios, but no one could mistake the Fourth Quartet for anyone other than Bridge. Together with the companion Naxos CDs of the Quartets #1 and 3 and the "Music for String Quartet", all performed by the very accomplished Maggini Quartet, you get the complete quartets plus so much memorable music for the price of a single high-end import. The music is alternately haunting, "music-hall"-ish, and nearly atonal. Really, my highest recommendation for anyone interested in 20th Century English music or just looking for something off of more well-visited paths."

Fine Frank Bridge Chamber Works Given Excellent Performances

J Scott Morrison | Middlebury VT, USA | 04/10/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Finally emerging from the shadow cast by Benjamin Britten, his most famous student, Frank Bridge (1879-1941) is now seen to be a major British composer of the first half of the twentieth century. Twenty-five years ago most music lovers had only heard of Bridge because Britten wrote a set of variations on one of his themes. Now, increasingly, his music is figuring on orchestral and chamber programs. His tone poems 'The Sea' and 'Enter Spring' are now heard with some regularity. Equally, his chamber music, a significant portion of his output, is now heard from time to time. Still, in fifty years of concert-going, I've never heard any of the present works played in concert, which is a pity as each of these three pieces is not only strongly written, but immediately attractive.



The earliest is the 'Phantasy for Piano, Violin, Viola and Cello in F Sharp Minor' written in 1909-1910. One of the large number of compositions in the 16th-century 'phantasy' (or 'fancy') form by numbers of English composers at the behest of W. W. Cobbett who had founded an annual prize in 1907 for pieces in the form, the Phantasy Piano Quartet is in Bridge's early style, partaking of a Brahmsian melos colored by the English/Irish quality of Bridge's teacher, C. V. Stanford. In one movement, it is in an arch form that mimics the movements of a standard piano quartet but played without interruption. In its twelve minutes it contains a slow, dramatic introduction followed by a light-hearted scherzo and then a gradual slowing to a tranquil finish. Three members of the Maggini Quartet, partnered by the fine English pianist Martin Roscoe, give an impassioned performance.



The first major chamber work of Bridge's maturity, by the time the Second String Quartet came to be written Cobbett's competition allowed works either in sonata or phantasy form. The Quartet is in three-movement sonata form , with a sonata-allegro first movement, a fast middle movement, and an allegro vivace third movement that follows a slow introduction. Interestingly, though, the middle movement is itself in Cobbett's beloved phantasy form. The Quartet won the Cobbett Prize for 1915. More chromatic than the Phantasy Quartet, the Second Quartet marks an advance in Bridge's musical language and points the way to the really quite amazing advances he was to make following the end of the War and up to his death in 1941. In this Quartet Bridge's strong melodic ability is in evidence as is a still-evident easygoing romanticism. He was himself a violist, having played in both the Joachim and the English Quartets, and one can note that the viola has some extremely interesting things to say throughout.



The Fourth Quartet (1937) was Bridge's last string quartet and very nearly his last chamber piece. It partakes of a more highly chromatic, almost atonal, harmonic language than his acknowledged chamber masterpiece, the Second Piano Trio, written ten years before. Anthony Payne in his fine article on Bridge in the Grove Dictionary comments that Bridge showed 'determination to keep all 12 chromatic notes in play' in this quartet and yet managed to keep his 'essential Englishness.' Echoes of Alban Berg are heard in the luscious post-romantic hyper-chromaticism, and yet for anyone who knows Bridge's earlier works, it is still recognizably a work by him. In three movements, the quartet is classical in its outline, certainly more so than the Second Quartet, with a large and complex sonata-allegro first movement with dramatic first and lyrical second themes, followed by a minuet (albeit an eerie one) and a rondo finale. In the dark and uneasy minuet Bridge gives important things to the viola, one of his stylistic fingerprints. The rondo finale becomes increasingly upbeat and the quartet ends with a flourish. There is no question that this quartet is one of the high water marks of early twentieth-century English quartet writing.



The Maggini Quartet (named for a sixteenth-century Italian instrument maker) was formed in 1988 and has become one of the more reliably interesting quartets in Great Britain. They are in the midst of recording the series of ten 'Naxos Quartets' written for them by Peter Maxwell-Davies and commissioned by the Naxos label. The first two have been released and the next two are due for release shortly. They have also recorded the 'Phantasy Quartet' of Ralph Vaughan Williams (along with the rest of his quartet output) and have also recorded all the Britten quartets. The members are Laurence Jackson and David Angel, violins; Martin Outram, viola; and Michal Kaznowski, cello.



TT=59:33



Scott Morrison"

Fine Phantasy ; String Quartets No Masterpieces

C.D. Wexler | 02/16/2007

(3 out of 5 stars)

"The gem on this CD is the Phantasy Quartet which shows the influence of both Brahms and Faure. Bridge's second string quartet is hardly the masterpiece described in the liner notes. His fourth string quartet seems to be a collection of stylistic gestures rather than a coherent whole. Aside from the Phantasy Quartet, these are workmanlike but uninspired compositions. Bridge is not the only composer to have significantly shifted his style and language. During roughly the same period, Zemlinsky went through a similar transition and produced four very fine string quartets."