Like so much of his output, Frank Bridge's piano music falls into two distinct halves, with the years of the first world war the stylistic and emotional watershed between them. Ashley Wass's selection includes seven works from both sides of that divide; the Three Pieces of 1912 epitomise the Edwardian salon style of the early music, while the impressionist pastels of the four-movement Fairy Tale suite from 1917 give few hints of what would follow within a few years.
The pivotal work in Bridge's development, the heavily chromatic Piano Sonata that he composed between 1921 and 1924, is missing; presumably Wass will include that on a second disc. But the world of the later music is exemplified in the two pieces that make up In Autumn, composed just after the completion of the sonata. There are echoes in the piano writing of Scriabin, but even more of Alban Berg, to the extent of a near quote from his Op 1 sonata in the first piece. Wass's shaping of this harmonically mobile music is just as assured as his presentation of the much more conventional moulds of the earlier works; it's a valuable collection.
