Rising Stars

Frank Bridge is mostly remembered these days as Benjamin Britten’s teacher.  Yet he represented a unique color on the palette of English music at the turn of the last century, and his works have begun to make a well-deserved comeback on concert programs.

The title “Phantasy” refers to the fact that the work is in a single movement but consists of several distinct sections–just like English consort phantasies, or “fancies,” of the 16th and 17th centuries.  Walter Willson Cobbett (1847-1937), an influential patron of chamber music and the author of the reference work Cobbett’s Cyclopedic Survey of Chamber Music, sought to revive this quintessentially English genre and, in 1905, established a composition prize for which only works written in this form were eligible.  Between 1901 and 1910, Bridge submitted three compositions for Cobbett’s competition.  In 1907, he won first prize with his Phantasie Piano Trio, and then entered again with the present work three years later.  (Britten won the prize in 1932, at the age of nineteen.)

Bridge’s quartet is based on the alternation of two contrasting materials:  an expansively lyrical first idea (preceded by an energetic introduction) and a scherzo-like second subject.  The goal was to create organic unity by using contrasting materials, an objective that Bridge achieved brilliantly.

In a survey of the composer’s entire output, Anthony Payne called this work “early Bridge at its finest.”  The composer later abandoned the lush late Romantic style of the quartet in favor of a more modernistic approach.  Yet when Britten paid homage to his former teacher with his celebrated Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge (1937), he also took his theme from “early Bridge,” the second of Three Idylls for String Quartet (1906).

© 2026 Peter Laki

When Beethoven left his native Bonn for Vienna in 1792, his patron, Count Waldstein, sent him on his way with the prophetic words: “With the help of assiduous labor you shall receive Mozart’s spirit from Haydn’s hands.”  Once in Vienna, the young composer lost no time in asserting his ambition to become the third member of this illustrious triumvirate.

Haydn, with whom Beethoven had studied briefly, found himself in direct competition with his student when each was commissioned by Prince Franz Joseph Lobkowitz to write a set of string quartets.  Haydn only finished two quartets out of six that had been planned (these were published as Op. 77), but the young genius, whom Haydn jokingly called the “Grand Mogul,” completed the set.

Published as the third in the Op. 18 collection, the D major quartet was actually the very first quartet Beethoven ever wrote.  Its opening, with its bold, unaccompanied leap of a minor seventh, immediately announces a new musical voice, and the continuation is similarly innovative:  the number of keys visited in the course of the movement is greater than usual, resulting in an exciting and utterly unpredictable harmonic plan.

The second movement is based on a gentle theme proceeding in equal eighth notes, yet it becomes quite dramatic in the course of its development.  The scherzo (Beethoven called it simply Allegro) and its middle section are uncommonly agitated, and the finale abounds in surprises.  At the very end, Beethoven appears to pay homage to Haydn: the way he turns the first three notes of the theme into a pianissimo ending is an obvious nod to the older master.

© 2026 Peter Laki

Commissioned by the Chamber Music Detroit, Barber’s Summer Music for wind quintet was first performed at the Detroit Institute of Arts on March 20, 1956.

“Nocturnal,” “romantic” and “rhapsodic” are some of the adjectives critics have applied to this beautiful one-movement work.  The opening is “slow and indolent” (Barber’s tempo indication), with some languorous flourishes giving way to a lyrical melody and then to a faster section in which Barber consistently shaves off one sixteenth note from every other measure, resulting in a remarkable 2/4 + 7/16 pattern.  A later theme adds a slight Russian flavor to a piece that elsewhere has a predominantly French sound, as in the culminating moment, marked “joyous and flowing.”  In her seminal book on Barber, Barbara Heyman notes that this passage contains an allusion to Jean Françaix’s Quintet, which Barber had heard the New York Woodwind Quintet rehearse.  The final section of Summer Music is again quiet, with a surprising—in fact, somewhat abrupt—ending.

© 2026 Peter Laki

Both of Mendelssohn’s piano trios are in minor keys, exploring the dramatic side of the Classical heritage–the manner that some have referred to as Sturm und Drang, or “storm and stress.”  The opening theme of the second trio, played by the piano in a mysterious, soft unison, immediately establishes that agitated voice, which remains an almost constant presence throughout the movement.

The second movement Andante espressivo is a lyrical “song without words” whose theme is played in turn by the piano and the two strings.  The volume never rises above piano until the middle section where, however, the music quickly reaches fortissimo dynamics.  The faster accompanying passages added to the piano part, significantly, stay on even when the opening lyrical melody returns.

The third movement belongs to the special type of “fairy” scherzo found in many of Mendelssohn’s works (most famously in the incidental music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream).  This time, the composer uses duple meter instead of triple (which is more common in scherzos), and a constant flow of light-footed sixteenth notes.  The fast pace is maintained even in the middle section, where a new melody appears, in the bright key of G major as opposed to the G minor of the scherzo proper.

The finale, Allegro appassionato, returns to the agitated tone of the opening movement, but this time, the tensions are resolved by the surprising introduction of a chorale-like melody (closely related to the hymn known as “Old 100th”), which leads directly to a jubilant ending in C major, filled with happiness and positive energy.

© 2026 Peter Laki