Frank Bridge
Orchestral Works, Vol. 4
Recorded 2004 on Chandos Records
  Alban Gerhardt, cello
Richard Hickox, conductor
BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales
  Frank Bridge
1. Rebus, overture for orchestra (10:49)
2. Oration for cello and orchestra (29:23)
   MP3 Audio
3. Allegro moderato, for string orchestra (13:28)
4. Lament, for string orchestra (5:24)
5. A Prayer, for chorus and orchestra (17:57)
   
  Playing time: 77 minutes
 
 
This is the fourth and presumably last collection in Richard Hickox's invaluable survey of Frank Bridge's orchestral music for Chandos, one of the most important contributions to British music on disc in the last decade.... The cello "concerto elegiaco" Oration, completed in 1930, is marginally the better known of the two, and arguably the more striking, affecting work. It's a protest work against war in general, and surely served in some respects as a forerunner for the Sinfonia da Requiem by his pupil Benjamin Britten. The single movement is a synthesis of rhapsody and sonata form; the cello part is ruminative rather than showy, and the orchestral writing predominantly dark-hued....  
—The Guardian, April 2004
 
…If there is one work on this CD that earns Bridge a place among the immortals, it is Oration (Concerto elegiaco) for cello and orchestra.... Harmonically it is the most sophisticated piece on the CD, though it remains fundamentally tonal throughout. Few listeners will find it difficult on that account, yet it does require considerable listener attention to make sense. It's also a work that doesn't play itself, but that's not a problem in this recording. Cellist Gerhardt, conductor Hickox and the orchestra deliver an exquisitely committed account of this too-little known masterpiece. Indeed there isn't a less than excellent performance to be heard in all the seventy-seven minutes of music in this program.   
—Richard Todd, www.opuspocus.ca, 2004
 
 
...and above all by a deeply moving performance of Oration, perhaps the saddest cello concerto ever written. Here the intelligence and flexibility of Alban Gerhardt’s phrasing and the strong emotional charge of his playing count for a lot. Gerhardt’s sensitivity to the subtle gradations of dark timbres that Bridge continually exploits to create an elegiac, phantasmal world of lament make this probably the best yet among the few recordings Oration has ever had.
-BBC Music Magazine, Calum MacDonald