There is a willow grows aslant a brook (1927)

arranged for viola and piano by Benjamin Britten (1932)

It took an exceptional imagination to see that the close-knit, expressively dissonant orchestral textures of Frank Bridge’s There is a willow grows aslant a brook could be converted into a viable piece for a solo instrument and piano. But, as the violist he was in his student days, Benjamin Britten clearly realised that its elegiac quality would be well suited to the plangent voice of the viola. Bridge himself, also a violist, must have agreed with what his long-term pupil – now at the Royal College of Music and just finding his voice as a composer – proposed to do with the work. Inspired of course by Gertrude’s description of the death of Ophelia, this “Hamlet impression” is characterised by a lamenting tone which is most effectively voiced by the solo instrument, even if some of the pastoral quality of the orchestral scoring is lost in translation to the piano. There is a brief but distinctly brighter contrasting section towards the middle – presumably alluding to the lines, “Which time she chanted snatches of old lauds/As one incapable of her own distress” – but for the most part it is based on the eloquent melody introduced by viola (oboe in the original version) after the short introduction.