Frank Bridge - Isabella, H. 78

Frank Bridge (1879 - 1941) - Isabella, H. 78 (1907)
BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Richard Hickox (2000)
Isabella is a symphonic poem by Frank Bridge based on John Keats's poem of the same name. Typical performances last around 18 minutes.
"Romantic images of the night, of dreams and ghostly happenings, re-emerge in [Bridge's] second Symphonic Poem, Isabella, which he completed in January 1907. Henry Wood conducted the first performance at a Queen’s Hall Promenade Concert on 3 October 1907. No orchestral work by Bridge follows so detailed a narrative as Isabella. It is based on Keats’s poetic version of the gruesome Florentine tale by Boccaccio. Isabella is in love with the handsome Lorenzo. When her two merchant brothers discover this they lure him into a forest and murder him. In a dream at the ‘dull of midnight’ Isabella is visited by Lorenzo’s ghost and, taking her nurse with her, she rides into the dark of the forest, digs up her lover’s body and places its decapitated head in a pot of basil. Later the brothers steal the ‘horrid thing’ and Isabella, heartbroken, ‘dies forlorn, imploring for her basil to the last’. Taking the Lisztian model once again, Bridge’s treatment is more richly scored and tightly constructed than Mid of the Night. Particularly impressive is the way in which Bridge unfolds and combines the two themes associated with the lovers - Lorenzo’s heroic horn call and Isabella’s tender oboe melody - into a radiant climax. Their transformation into a spine-chilling midnight ride, the moment of the murder of Lorenzo, and his ghostly appearance at Isabella’s bed-side could hardly be more vividly portrayed. The final transformation of Isabella’s theme into a haunting minor-key lament reveals just how much Bridge had learned from Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet. In the final apotheosis tragedy gives way to tender resolution as the lovers are reunited in death."
(source: Chandos)

[@pocayonom]

Thanks for making me discover fantastic new composers

[@dleov4645]

This is so brilliantly orchestrated and it develops the main themes so well. Love it!