Bridge: Oration - Concerto elegiaco for cello and orchestra

“this profoundly engaging reading [of the Bridge] sets a new standard. [in Schelomo] nothing is forced or overdone, no rhetoric or posturing gets in the way of the work's own soulful expression...What he has achieved in this beautifully balanced recording with Hugh Wolff is a breathtaking new fluency and freedom.” BBC Music Magazine, June 2013 *****

“Isserlis's spellbinding advocacy of Bridge's raptly compassionate masterpiece in particular has acquired an extra richness of experience and plangent intensity...both performances [the Hough and the Bloch] really are tremendously compelling in their articulate composure, nourishing intelligence and clear-sighted purpose.” Gramophone Magazine, May 2013

“A mood of poignant intensity characterises the three works here, played by Steven Isserlis with two different orchestras...Some ridiculed [Schelomo] as suitable only for a Hollywood epic but Isserlis conveys its simple, urgent message.” The Observer, 7th April 2013

“Here's probably the most appealing and varied instalment in Richard Hickox's Frank Bridge series for Chandos. The disc's highlight is a superb performance of the 1930 'Concerto elegiaco' Oration, in which Hickox teams up with the gifted German cellist Alban Gerhardt. High drama and emotional candour are the keynotes to a riveting display. But there's no want of intimacy or compassion in the more contemplative passages, and the result is a trenchant interpretation that does justice to one of the towering masterpieces of British music.
The 1940 Rebus overture is as invigorating and impeccably crafted a concert-opener as any British composer has yet produced. The touching Lament (1915) is sensitively done, but Hickox and company seem less comfortable in Anthony Pople's completion of the patiently argued opening Allegro moderato from a projected symphony for strings upon which Bridge was working at the time of his death in 1941. Fortunately, there's a glowing account of A Prayer, Bridge's only composition for chorus and orchestra, a moving and often hauntingly beautiful setting from 1916-18 of words from The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis. Minor strictures notwithstanding, this is an essential purchase for Oration alone – and the music itself deserves the widest dissemination.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“Listening to this comprehensive Chandos set, Bridge’s position as a shadowy transitional figure comes into sharper focus, the early Edwardiana yielding to a much more sharply defined mature style...Despite this being a six-disc compilation, there’s little filler. The lighter pieces charm. The performances are consistently inspired, and the recorded sound is refulgent.” The Arts Desk, 29th September 2012