557842bk Bridge US 13/2/06 10:08 am Page 5 At the turn of the years 1913-14, Bridge conceived is related to the chromatic harmony of the Dance Poem Ashley Wass the idea of writing a four-movement suite under the (1913), whereas the wistful Sunset shares a relationship BRIDGE title of Four Characteristic Pieces. He later changed with the first of the Two Poems of Richard Jeffries The young British pianist, Ashley Wass, is recognised as one of the rising stars of his generation. Only the second his mind, submitting just the first three pieces for (1915). The extended middle movement, Ecstasy, British pianist in twenty years to reach the finals of the Leeds Piano Competition (in 2000), he was the first British publication with the title Three Poems (the fourth provides a vibrant and passionate contrast to the pianist ever to win the top prize at the World Piano Competition in 1997. He appeared in the ‘Rising Stars’ series movement was published two years later as pensive moods of the outer pieces. at the 2001 Ravinia Festival and his promise has been further acknowledged by the BBC, who selected him to be a Piano Music Arabesque). Two of the pieces indicate connections New Generations Artist over two season. Ashley Wass studied at Chethams Music School and won a scholarship to with contemporaneous orchestral works, thus Solitude Andrew Burn the Royal Academy of Music to study with Christopher Elton and Hamish Milne. He was made an Associate of the Royal Academy in 2002. He has spent three summers at the Marlboro Music Festival, playing chamber music with A Fairy Tale • The Hour Glass musicians such as Mitsuko Uchida, Richard Goode and David Soyer. Ashley Wass has given recitals at most of the major British concert halls including the Wigmore Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room, Bridgewater Hall and Miniature Pastorals • In Autumn St David’s Hall. His concerto performances have included Beethoven and Brahms with the Philharmonia, Mendelssohn with the Orchestre National de Lille and Mozart with the Vienna Chamber Orchestra at the Vienna Ashley Wass Konzerthaus and the Brucknerhaus in Linz. He has also worked with Sir Simon Rattle and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the London Mozart Players, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and other BBC orchestras. He recorded Poulenc’s Piano Concerto with the BBC Concert Orchestra and Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto with the BBC Philharmonic and Vassily Sinaisky, featured as a BBC Music Magazine cover CD. He appeared in a gala concert at Buckingham Palace to mark the Golden Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, a performance broadcast live to millions of viewers around the world, and in 2002 opened the Hong Kong Philharmonic’s concert season with Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto and later in the same season made his début with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and conductor Paul Daniel. His career has continued with numerous recitals throughout Britain, appearances as a soloist with major orchestras and recital débuts in Germany, Cuba, Sweden and Israel. Ashley Wass made his début recording in 1999 with an acclaimed solo recital disc of works by César Franck for Naxos (8.554484). He is also much in demand as a chamber musician and has already collaborated with some of the leading artists of his generation. In 2003 he formed the Denali Trio with violinist Jesse Mills and cellist Sarah Carter, the artists having previously collaborated at the Marlboro and Ravinia Festivals in the United States. Their début tour of Britain in February 2004 was an outstanding success, winning enthusiastic reviews and resulting in a host of other invitations on both sides of the Atlantic. The first CD of his projected recording for Naxos of the complete piano works of Arnold Bax, released in 2004 (8.557439), was selected as Editor’s Choice by The Gramophone, a series complemented by further recordings of music by Bax and other British composers. 8.557842 5 6 8.557842 557842bk Bridge US 13/2/06 10:08 am Page 2 Frank Bridge (1879–1941) Frank Bridge (1879–1941) heroic music of The Prince suggests that the spell has ground-breaking Piano Sonata. Heart’s Ease harks Piano Music • 1 Piano Music • 1 been broken and that everyone lives happily ever after. back to Bridge’s early salon music and is formed The trio of pieces that comprise The Hour Glass around a descending bell-like tinkling phrase in the Suite, A Fairy Tale (1917) 11:19 Frank Bridge studied violin and composition at the response to the demand for salon music, which was (1919-20) form a particularly effective sequence built treble and the simple, but warm and reassuring, 1 The Princess: Allegretto con moto 2:49 Royal College of Music where he was a pupil of played by the many skilled amateur musicians of that around images of transience. Bridge’s music, melodic fragment that follows. Towards the end there 2 The Ogre: Allegro deciso 1:27 Stanford from 1899 to 1903. Apart from composition time, as well as for professional pianists to include in especially from the 1920s onwards, inhabits, at times, are some luscious harmonic twists before the 3 The Spell: Adagio e sostenuto 4:12 his career embraced performance (he was the violist of recitals. The evocative titles chosen for pieces were a nocturnal world, one of shadows and half-lights as in tintinnabulations are recalled to round off the piece. 4 The Prince: Allegro giocoso 2:52 several quartets, most notably the English String often at the behest of publishers as a sales ploy. Overall Dusk. Here fleeting wisps of melody and a melancholy Dainty Rogue is an ebullient, humorous scherzo Quartet), conducting (he frequently deputised for Sir Bridge’s pieces are marked by his superb phrase that turns in on itself evoke a twilight pall. The marked by rapid changes in metre and bravura writing The Hour Glass (1919–20) 14:45 Henry Wood), and teaching, Benjamin Britten being craftsmanship and apart from Fauré, Ravel and shimmering flight of The Dew Fairy provides for the instrument. The Hedgerow is elusive in 5 Dusk: Molto moderato 4:59 his most renowned pupil. No other British composer of Debussy influence them too. Occasionally they are translucent contrast, before darkness returns in the character with its rapidly changing musical images and 6 The Dew Fairy: Allegretto moderato e rubato 3:48 the first half of the twentieth century reveals such a related to larger works that were occupying the rolling waters of The Midnight Tide that brings to mind moods. It is far more chromatic in its harmony than 7 The Midnight Tide: Molto lento 5:58 stylistic journey in his music. His early works, like the composer at the same time. During the war years Debussy’s La cathédrale engloutie. It ebbs and flows either of the preceding pieces and reflects the stylistic Miniature Pastorals (Set 1) (1917) 6:09 First String Quartet (1906), the Phantasy Piano Trio Bridge mainly composed smaller works, particularly from sombre chords that build to a dramatic climax as developments Bridge achieved in the sonata. 8 Allegretto con moto 2:17 (1907), and the orchestral suite The Sea (1910-11), for piano, as well as songs, and this seems to be due, in the pianist tumbles down the piano in octaves like foam The Three Pieces (1912) are the earliest works 9 Tempo di valse 2:09 follow in the late-Romantic tradition bearing a kinship part, to the anguish he felt at the death and destruction breaking over a wave. Over a hushed pedal-point the included here. Of them Columbine and Minuet are in 0 Allegretto ben moderato 1:44 with Brahms and Fauré; subsequently, in the orchestral wrought by the conflict. (It is known that he was so chords swell again to a further swirling outburst, before the style of Bridge’s early music. The former, a waltz, tone poem Summer (1914), Bridge comes close to the distressed by the war that he would wander the streets subsiding to a brooding conclusion. has the elegance of Edwardian salon music with just a Three Lyrics (1921–24) 8:30 orbit of Delius. After the First World War, however, by himself at night, mulling over the horrors.) It was as Miniature Pastorals (1917) was the first of three hint of sentimentality, although at its climax it seems ! Heart’s Ease: Andante tranquillo – Lento 2:34 his music became intense and chromatic as in the if he could not muster the necessary concentration to sets under the same title conceived as pieces for made of sterner stuff, while the Minuet was originally @ Dainty Rogue: Molto allegro e vivo 1:53 Scriabinesque Piano Sonata (1921-4). The radical work on extended pieces, as witnessed by the four-year children which in their original edition were composed in 1901, and was substantially revised in # The Hedgerow: Allegretto moderato 4:02 language of the sonata was pursued in his chamber gestation period of the Cello Sonata (1913-17). In accompanied by line drawings by Margaret Kemp- 1912. Romance is predominantly tender in mood, works of the 1920s, so that in the Third String Quartet addition his response to the war also seems to have Welch. In character they are in the tradition of culminating in two impassioned climaxes. Three Pieces (1912) 8:56 (1926) Bridge rubs shoulders with the early works of triggered a stylistic crisis in his music, and a need to Schumann’s Kinderszenen and are cast in the manner Composed in 1924 during the months immediately $ Columbine: Poco lento – Tempo di Valse 2:55 % Minuet: Tempo di Minuetto 2:04 the Second Viennese School.