Verrecchia, Laura / Bernstein, Benjamin / Morozova, Natalia
Bridge, Britten: Chamber Music With Viola
The programme reconstructs the human and creative bond between Frank Bridge and Benjamin Britten through the viola, the masters professional instrument and the pupils private voice. Bridges Three Songs, Pensiero, Allegro appassionato and Two Pieces for Two Violas map a world of elegy, harmonic ambiguity and theatrical energy/ particular documentary value attaches to the Caprice, reconstructed in 2018 by Simon Rowland-Jones from surviving fragments. Brittens transcription of There Is a Willow Grows Aslant a Brook leads towards Reflexion, Elegy and Lachrymae op. 48, where the viola becomes a vessel of memory, solitude and metamorphosis. Dowlands theme, withheld until the close of Lachrymae, seals a journey in which English tradition and modernity recognise themselves as one inheritance.