First movement from the Piano Sonata (1921-24) Ashley Wass, piano According to Andrew Burn "As a pacifist of deep conviction Bridge was scarred by the misery caused by World War I. It is known that he was so distressed by the news from the battlefields that he would wander the streets by himself at night, mulling over the carnage. Furthermore his response to the war also seems to have triggered a stylistic crisis in his music, and a need to develop a more radical harmonic voice to express himself. The first major manifestation of this new style was his most important solo work for piano, the Sonata... The Piano Sonata was composed between Easter 1921 and May 1924, and since Harold Samuel, the pianist Bridge initially had in mind to give the première, found it bewildering, its first performance was played by Myra Hess on 15 October 1925 at the Wigmore Hall. Bridge dedicated the sonata to the memory of his composer friend, Ernest Bristow Farrar, who had been killed in action in 1918 aged 33. It was the first of Bridge's works to receive a mauling by the critical fraternity: for instance The Daily Telegraph reviewer felt it was 'inclined to dourness throughout', whilst in The Morning Post it was dismissed as a 'disappointment'. The characteristics of Bridge's late style are foreshadowed in the sonata. There is dissonance arising from bi-tonal and intensely chromatic harmony; the phrase structure differs from the smoothness of his earlier music, reflecting the more complex ...
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