Who knows why Frank Bridge isn't better known. His music is distinctive, direct, bracing, beautiful, and written in every significant genre and idiom in the later part of the nineteenth and the earlier part of the twentieth centuries. This disc pairing Bridge's String Quartet No. 1 and No. 3 shows him at his most deeply and passionately musical: his First was written in his youth in a burst of single energy in a month and his Third was written in his maturity with all the courage and strength of his modernist convictions. ...
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Who knows why Frank Bridge isn't better known. His music is distinctive, direct, bracing, beautiful, and written in every significant genre and idiom in the later part of the nineteenth and the earlier part of the twentieth centuries. This disc pairing Bridge's String Quartet No. 1 and No. 3 shows him at his most deeply and passionately musical: his First was written in his youth in a burst of single energy in a month and his Third was written in his maturity with all the courage and strength of his modernist convictions. In these recordings by the Maggini Quartet, the First is an attractive and vigorous work with warm colors and a winning lyricism, while the Third is a strong but severe work with hard edges and sharp points. The Maggini plays with confidence and dedication and Naxos captures its performance in bright, clean sound. ~ James Leonard, Rovi
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