The official website for the composer and
Highbridge Music, which publishes his works.
Highbridge Music Ltd.
Studio 6, 18 Kensington Court Place, London W8 5BJ, UK
Email: howard@howardblake.com
Featured Recordings
BRIEDEL LES VACHES op.690 (June 2017)
A piece to celebrate 200 years of Beethoven
Published by: highbridge musicCommissioned by: susanne kessel
Instrumentation: piano solo
[Key to Abbreviations]
Duration: 1 mins
Notes
BRIEDEL LES VACHES Music for an animated film by Richard Williams Composed by Howard Blake Originally scored for Two clarinets, horn,violin, viola, violoncello, contrabass, piano and percussion Transcribed for piano June 2017Performances
| 30th September 2017 | Susanne Kessel (piano)
Within a long piano recital Susanne Kessel will play
nine premieres and ten more piano pieces of the Beethoven project, (200th anniversary).
Eight composers from Bonn will be her guests on stage to talk and discuss., Post Tower Lounge Bonn (Beethovenfest)
REVIEW MUSIC FOR LUDWIG Post TowerSusanne Kessel performs new music Probably none of the listeners on Saturday evening at the Post Tower Lounge followed the advice by Susanne Kessel to start practising the already published “250 piano pieces for Beethoven”!! For that reason the international composition project might be thought too ambitious. Nevertheless this concert, placed in the agenda of a supporting program of the Beethovenfest presented inspiring insights into contemporary composition techniques. Kessel had nine world premieres in her program with several of the composers present to explain their works and their references to Beethoven - Otfried Büsing, Wilfrid Maria Danner, Jan Kopp, Pierre Thilloy and Ruth Wiesenfeld. Beside that Beethoven himself was performed and we also heard works by Anton Diabelli and Christian Gottlob Neefe (Beethoven’s teacher) The assembly of four premieres in the program’s second part was dramaturgically ingenious, the works by Roberto Oetomo, Alan Crossman, Kadhija Zeynalova and Howard Blake signalling a more tonal language. Kessel explained that, while Zeynalova's “In memoriam Ludwig van Beethoven” weaves two themes from Beethoven's work together in dreamlike musical impressionism, Blake presents a solution of this “task” in a pragmatic-tongue-in-cheek manner, using a piece of music once created for an advertising spot for a Belgian milk company, where hints of the “Ode to Joy” emerge as milk pours into a glass! The pianist from Bonn performed all of this with bravura, great flexibility and virtuosity, with a maximum of sensitivity and infectious enthusiasm for those differently sparkling compositorical references to Beethoven. This most musically-colourful concert received much applause. Montag, 2.10.2017 Claudia Wallendorf
|