Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge

Two jolting pizzicato chords, and—above a smouldering bass note—violins play leaping lines high above, each ending in a fiery trill. It’s a bold start to an extraordinary showpiece for string orchestra. Composed in 1937, it was both Benjamin Britten’s fond tribute to his first composition teacher, Frank Bridge, taking a theme from the second of his Three Idylls of 1906, and a brilliant showcase of the fresh, unexpected yet never outré sounds the young composer could make from a string orchestra. Its commission came in May from the conductor Boyd Neel, who needed a new, previously unperformed work by a British composer to premiere at the Salzburg Festival that August. The speed and mastery with which Britten fulfilled this is astonishing, taking Bridge’s theme through several characteristic variations—amongst others, an insouciant “Romance”, an outrageous display of coloratura for the “Aria Italiana” and Mahlerian angst for the “Funeral March”—then rounding it off with an impassioned final presentation of Bridge’s theme, shorn of the genteel, sideling harmonies of its original appearance, as if to insist on the hitherto underestimated genius of his teacher.