frank bridge (1879-1941) is one of Great Britain’s most important and most prolific composers in the realm of chamber music. As a violinist he played himself in the joachim quartet and later in the english string quartet so he knew the genre from the inside as it were.

 

Bridge’s music evolved from a post-Romantic style inspired by brahms and sir charles villiers stanford toward a musical language influenced by the second viennese school. The monumental second piano trio, dedicated to elizabeth sprague coolidge just as was schoenberg’s third string quartet, clearly belongs to the second category and can be seen not only as one of the high points of english chamber music in the twentieth century but also as one of the greatest piano trios ever written.

 

Two compositional principles meet in the construction of the work, predominantly linear in the first two movements and more harmonic in the third. In the last movement which joins the third without a break, the two principles are brought together. The musical language is bitonal based on the juxtaposition of chords built up in thirds. The atmosphere is often a little bittersweet and in this sense rather typically english, shakespeare in the vienna woods instead of in the forest of arden perhaps . . .

 

pianotrio no. 2 (1929)

 

I allegretto ben moderato

II molto allegro

III andante molto

IV allegro ma non troppo