These two works, Bridge’s
most substantial orchestral pieces,
are, to all intents and purposes, concertos.
Oration’s original
title was Concerto Elegaico which
gives a clue to its character. Premiered
in a BBC radio broadcast in early 1937,
with the young Florence Hooton as soloist,
it drew a favourable notice from Ernest
Newman who was not exactly known to
be an admirer of Bridge’s music. Bridge
was a pacifist and Oration was
an anguished outcry against the pain
and futility of war. Personal loss,
too, must have informed its pages. The
work is cast in one single movement
using the ‘phantasy’ form that had served
the composer so well, earlier, when
he had applied it to his chamber works.
The music moves through episodes of
bleak horror – especially in its use
of a grotesque parody of a funeral march
- to expressions of blazing anger and
haunted grief; the lyrical episodes
have a deeply-felt poignancy. This is
extraordinarily expressive music, raw
in its emotion. The section marked Ben
Moderato mesto e tranquillo seems
to suggest spectral birdsong in a desolated,
torn landscape as the cello treads a
path of despair. The Epilogue, added
later, presumably to alleviate the work’s
dark hues, with its simple chiming ostinato,
suggesting a healing passage of time
and perhaps conveying a message of hope
is, for me, one of the loveliest passages
Bridge created. Julian Lloyd Webber
and Nicholas Braithwaite, wonderfully
attuned to the bleak beauty of this
work’s noble suffering, ensure that
only the most stone-hearted could fail
to be touched by its power.
Phantasm, premiered
in 1934, was coolly received by the
critics in spite of a performance, distinguished
by soloist Kathleen Long, that drew
praise from Frank Bridge. Paul Hindmarsh,
in his erudite, quite technical, yet
accessible notes, suggests that "it
inhabits the world of dreams and ghostly
apparitions". Once again, the work
is cast in one continuous movement.
It opens with extended piano musings
only briefly interrupted by a protesting
orchestral outburst before violins,
later joined by woodwinds, express meekness
and yearning that is brushed aside by
descending piano scales. The music develops
very much in the way of Late Romantic
concertos and in some respects the music
of Hollywood romances is not too distant.
The tempo quickens in the second Allegro
moderato section, dreams turning
to nightmares as grotesqueries, waltzes
first distorted, then softened, and
martial figures stalk. As in the opening
movement, the piano first meanders through
the Andante molto moderato that
follows, seemingly to no purpose. Reflecting,
autumnal strings enter to point the
piano towards nostalgic regret and a
ghostly solo violin summons wraithlike
apparitions before more Hollywood perorations.
The final Allegro moderato section
with its relentless brutal tread seems
to point in the same anti-war direction
as the grotesqueries of Oration.
Lloyd Webber and Braithwaite
powerfully express Oration’s
anti-war sentiments and the haunted
pages of Phantasm. Rewarding
stuff for the more adventurous music-lover.
Ian Lace
see also review
by Rob Barnett (av August Recording
of the Month)
The
Lyrita Catalogue
for details
Julian Lloyd Webber (cello) 
