One of Bridge’s most characterful early works, this Piano Quartet from 1910 was played at the 1948 Aldeburgh Festival with Bridge’s most famous pupil, Benjamin Britten at the piano. Britten also supplied a note on the piece: ‘Finished in June 1910, this work is written in Bridge’s early style – sonorous yet lucid, with clear, clean lines, grateful to listen to and to play. It is the music of a practical musician, brought up in German orthodoxy, but who loved French romanticism and conception of sound – Brahms happily tempered with Fauré.’

The work is in three continuous sections: a Barcarolle, a Scherzo and Trio, and a recitative leading to a reprise of the opening. Writing about the short coda, Britten says that it ‘suggests the deep red afterglow of a sunset.’

Nigel Simeone 2014