For some reason, English composer Frank Bridge remains nearly unknown even to those who love the music of his contemporaries, Holst and
Vaughan Williams, and his most famous student,
Benjamin Britten. Part of it could be that Bridge's style evolved so radically from pompous irony to pastoral fantasy to abstract expressionism. Part of it could be that Bridge's technique advanced so quickly from tonal to chromatic to all but serial. And part of it could be the simple reason that most of the music is too elusive to be memorable: listen to any work by Bridge and then try to hum the main theme. Elusiveness in music is not necessarily a bad thing -- listen to any work by Ockeghem or Webern and try to hum a tune -- but it does hinder popularity.
This does not mean, however, that Bridge was not a good, perhaps at times even a great composer. On this 1995 disc of three chamber works scored for violin, cello, and piano, England's
Dussek Piano Trio does its best to make the strongest possible case for the composer. In the nine Miniatures from 1906-1907, the players capture the sly eccentricity of the work's sequence of parodies. In the single-movement Phantasie Trio in D minor from 1908, they project the work's passionate intensity. In the large-scale, four-movement Piano Trio No. 2 from 1929, they articulate the work's nearly serial expressivity. Whether their efforts are effective depends entirely on the listener, but surely anyone who loves Holst,
Vaughan Williams, and
Britten owes it to themselves to check out Bridge. Meridian's digital high resolution recording is clean and natural, if perhaps too distant.