Frank Bridge - Dance Poem, H. 111

Frank Bridge (1879 - 1941) - Dance Poem, H. 111 (1913)
BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Richard Hickox (2001)
Frank Bridge's Dance Poem is a work for orchestra typically lasting around 14 minutes.
"A Bridge-Debussy connection is obvious in his orchestral work, Dance Poem, which Bridge composed during the first half of 1913. Would he have been inspired to try his hand at an abstract ballet without the example of Debussy’s Jeux and the prospect of interest from Diaghilev’s Ballets russes - which, sadly for Bridge, in the end came to nothing? Dance Poem was the first work in which Bridge took a step away from the tuneful and colourful idiom which had served him so well for a decade. He was beginning to ‘spread his wings’. The bold rhetorical gestures and loose-limbed structures of Dance Rhapsody give way to a more concise approach. There is an obsessive quality about the way in which Bridge worries over his themes rather than letting them unfold in the expansive manner of old. The harmonic language is becoming more elusive and ambiguous, with the whole-tone scale assuming an increasingly important role in the tonal structure. Dance Poem is a symphonic waltz in six closely argued sections corresponding, in outline, to the episodes in a traditional sonata form movement: Tempo di valse, ‘The Dancer’ (Introduction); Lento e languido - Tempo di valse, ‘Allurement’ (Exposition); Largamente - Grazioso, ‘Abandon’, and Tempo di valse, ‘Tenderness’ (Development); A tempo, poco lento, ‘Problem’ (Recapitulation); Vivo - Presto, ‘Disillusion’ (Coda). The ambitious aim is to convey in music the emotions expressed in a dancer’s movements. There is a basic waltz tempo which fluctuates according to the prevailing mood. The music’s main ideas - presented in ‘The Dancer’ - are deliberately shaped with a potential for transformation and contrapuntal association. They become seductive and sensuous in ‘Allurement’ and ‘Tenderness’; they are more robust and forthright in ‘Abandon’, questioning in ‘Problem’; and after a whirlwind climax they dissolve into ‘Disillusion’."
(source: Chandos)

[@JoricioCagel]

wow, this is really great. with some darker undertones than his previous pieces, seems to me.