Robert Bridge Returns to All Saint's Church

Knitting concert programme includes Chopin, Bartok and Moszkowski

Robert Bridge

June 25, 2024

Local pianist Robert Bridge will, once again be holding a concert at All Saints' Church on Putney Common.

The performance takes place on Sunday, 30 June at 6pm and features 2 Nocturnes, Op.27 and Barcarolle, Op.60 by Chopin, Bartok’s Out of Doors (1926) and Barcarolle and Tarantelle, Op.27 by Moszkowski.

The concert will last about an hour, with free admission and refreshments, and you can bring something to do whilst you listen if you want to, as long as it won't disturb your neighbours.

There will be a retiring collection at the end of to try and defray some of the costs and any surplus will be given to Help Musicians, the contemporary brand of the Musicians Benevolent Fund.

Robert says, “Whilst there was an obvious urgency to support them during the lockdowns - and thus enable them to support so many musicians who were left stranded - sadly a parlous situation for the arts still exists with almost weekly closures of orchestras and ensembles. I am aware that so many of my musical colleagues are having a really rough time. And I'll be hoping for some glorious summer weather and perhaps the chance to spill out onto the lawns with post-prandial drinks after this one - I am but a hopeless romantic...”

On the chosen pieces he says, “As a student I learnt Bartok's Sonata, written in 1926 - a year that produced some particularly gritty compositions - and loved its earthiness and uncompromising primality. Like early love affairs there was a part of me that wanted to revisit it but also felt that it would never be quite the same second time around. I knew there was a companion piece, a set of five movements called Out of Doors, written in the same year and in a similar style, but also knew that they are a formidable challenge.

“I have lost count of the number of times that I have taken the music off the shelves, looked at it, played around with it for a few days and put it away again. But I guess we all get to an age where the windows for tackling more difficult tasks become ever narrower and so this year I decided to knuckle down and learn them. They are a tough ride, inspired by Hungarian folk idioms but unsparing in the dissonance of their style, yet gripping and infectious; the last movement, the Chase, is one of the most outrageous pieces of writing from the early twentieth century that I know.”

He continues, “I thought it was only fair to cushion these hard hitters between some more accessible music: the second movement of the Bartok is a Barcarolle, a gondolier's song, and taking this as a starting point I thought of some other Barcarolles of which Chopin's is probably the most famous and most fabulous. I also thought of Moszkowski's Op.27 Barcarolle, deliciously winsome, and that allowed me to couple it with the Tarantelle, probably the most feel-good piece of 19C virtuoso piano writing that I know: if these pieces don't bring a tear to your eye and a smile to your lips then it might be a good idea to get your vital signs checked. Once you programme Moszkowski's Op.27 then it would be rude not to include Chopin's sublime pair of Nocturnes that make up his own Op.27 - and there you have the programme.”