Bridge: The Sea; Enter Spring; Summer; Two Poems for Orchestra.(Sound Recording Review)

Bridge: The Sea; Enter Spring; Summer; Two Poems for Orchestra. James Judd, New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. Naxos 8.557167.

Frank Bridge (1879-1941) is one of those composers who may be more well-known today for being the teacher of Benjamin Britten than for being a leading exponent of the British pastoral movement of the early twentieth century.

Be that as it may, Bridge followed a career in romanticism until the First World War changed his disposition and outlook on music. From rich, flowing, descriptive tone poems his music took a turn toward harsher, more dissonant, more modern paths, and subsequently his popularity declined. Critics today tend to praise his later, more-mature works, but that may be a reaction against romanticism itself, which is only just beginning to make a comeback in contemporary classical music. Like it or not, however, it is Bridge's early work that continues to sell and, I assume, to give people pleasure.

This Naxos disc brings together three of the composer's best-known tone poems, The Sea, Enter Spring, and Summer, and adds a couple of brief Poems for Orchestra for good measure. The highlight of the disc is The Sea, sounding for all the world like Debussy's La Mer. I suppose you could say of the early Bridge that he was England's answer to France's Debussy and Ravel, weaving intricate little tapestries of light and color, musical portraits that impressionistically and expressionistically touch the heart and soul. The Sea, for instance, is divided into four ...