Frank Bridge is today recognized as one of the most gifted figures in British musical life before World War I. His Piano Quintet, a work of personal significance prompted by the absence of his fiancée, is notable for it's passionate, lyrical and forceful language, the Rachmaninov-like technical demands of the piano part calling for a virtuoso pianist. Debussy described Cyril Scott's exotic harmonic language as "an intoxication for the ear", and the First Piano Quintet is a multi-faceted work which mirrors Scott's flamboyant public persona while maintaining a genuinely poetic inner beauty.