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Howard Blake: Violin Sonata; Piano Quartet Compact Disc Naxos November 18, 2008 British composer Howard Blake is known in his native country for film scores, including that for the short animated feature The Snowman (1982). Even by that time, however, he had begun to cut back on writing film and television music in favor of concert pieces at a time hardly congenial for his conservative style. An intriguing feature of the chamber music presented here is that three of the four works are revised versions of works written in the mid-'70s; the fourth dates from 1974 and is presented in a recording made in that year. That recording sounds sonically out of place, but this little-known music -- all the pieces are world premieres -- is a nice find. Blake can certainly be classed with the neo-Romantics. Reportedly he was initially surprised to be compared with Dvorák, but here, in his own booklet notes, he quotes a critic who makes the comparison. Like that of his model, Blake's version of Romanticism avoids sentimentality and heavily relies on rhythmic interest. Blake excels in short forms. The Penillion for violin and piano, Op. 571, is a startlingly concise variation set (a penillion is a Welsh oral tradition of improvised verses), and perhaps the highlight of the whole disc is the group of Jazz Dances for violin and piano, Op. 520a. Originally written for two pianos and arriving in the current version via one for cello, these dances are not jazz in the Gershwin sense, but subtle rhythmic tweaks of popular rhythms that go beyond jazz to tango (Slow Ragtime, track 17) and even medium rock, which makes something consistently absorbing out of the simplest of rhythms. The larger works are closer to the Dvorák models, with vigorous dance themes overlaid with hints of chromaticism. A pleasing group of works for those who enjoy the new Romantic sound. Back to Title Details © 2010 All Media Guide, LLC. Portions of Content Provided by All Music Guide ®, a registered Trademark of All Media Guide, LLC.

VIOLIN SONATA

Howard BLAKE (b. 1938) Violin Sonata (1973 revised 2007) [23:41] Penillion Op.571 (1975 revised 2005) [9:32] Piano Quartet Op.179 (1974) [27:14] ¹ Jazz Dances for violin and piano Op.520a (1976 revised 2008) [13:48] Madeleine Mitchell (violin) Jack Rothstein (violin); Kenneth Essex (viola); Peter Willison (cello) ¹ Howard Blake (piano) rec. May-July 2008, Potton Hall, Suffolk and October 1974, Conway hall, London (Piano Quartet) NAXOS 8.572083 [74:15] Howard Blake’s Violin Sonata opens vibrantly but its poignant second subject alerts one to more sorrowful intimations, ones that are to recur as the sonata develops. Songfully lyric, it also embraces – in its slow movement – regretful intimacy. But Blake ensures that this is balanced by a more assertive and pained contrasting section before chimes usher in the tolling, elegiac reverie, one that ends on a sustained violin note. We are whisked away from this by the finale that freewheels virtuosically with the unabashed panache of a New Orleans funeral band returning from the graveside – but, again, not before some shimmering writing reflects on earlier material, recognising the skull beneath the skin, the loss in the laughter. It’s only when one reads that the work was dedicated to a sonata partner colleague of Blake’s, that splendid musician, the late Miles Baster – a prominent student of Albert Sammons and first violin of the Edinburgh String Quartet – that one realises the depths of utterance here. Blake hopes that Baster would have approved. Assuredly so, one thinks. This is a splendid work – at once, one senses, a violin treatise in expressivity and virtuosity, and also a subtle portrait of the impress of a lamented friend. The Piano Quartet Op.179 is the other big work here, and it opens with Toreador brio. The corporate sonority of the group is absolutely splendid and conveys Blake’s music with total dedication. This actually is something of an anomalous recording, given that it was made back in 1974 in the Conway Hall with that arch-inspirer of a number of Blake’s chamber works, Jack Rothstein, leading the ensemble. The confident Scherzo carries on the extroversion with a cello pizzicato episode taken up by the piano in imitative drollery. There’s a classical formality about the writing and a winning generosity of spirit. There’s also a bell toll in the slow movement but it’s very different from the lament to Miles Baster in the sonata. Instead the lyricism is warm, unhurried and uncloying. Joie de vivre drives on the finale, with its ‘stand up straight’ fugato and brief folkloric hints. This is another really enjoyable work, unashamed in its generosity. There are hints of Copland in the Jazz Dances for violin and piano but in the main these genial, atmospheric little pieces steer clear of anything too serious; they’re more dance-patterned than jazzy in any case: no Stuff Smith moments here. But do sample the witty Boogie movement – good fun. Penillion exists in variant instrumentation and is a theme and variations. Here it’s for violin and piano but there’s a bardic version for flute and harp. The violin version brings out the pseudo-Romanian/Carpathian qualities of it – lovely tumbling trills, plenty of badinage, a ghostly fifth variation, and a wistful close. Madeleine Mitchell has assumed the Baster-Rothstein place in Blake’s violinistic firmament, and bravo to that, as she is a marvellously communicative and virtuosic performer and plays with great sympathy. The composer himself accompanies throughout and with brio, reflection and delight. The recording locations – Potton Hall now, Conway Hall then – are admirable. So is this disc. Jonathan Woolf Brio, reflection and delight ... see Full Review

Counterpunch

Interviewing Howard Blake Have the CIA and British Intelligence Destroyed Classical Music in the Western World? By Afshin Rattansi When it comes to the visual arts, there is a plethora of evidence for the CIA’s activities in fostering the work of U.S. abstract expressionism by means of Nelson Rockefeller’s New York Museum of Modern Art, which deprecated figurative, and often populist, art in favor of what Rockefeller approvingly called “free enterprise painting.” It is a well-known tale, much of it focused on the CIA-backed U.S. Congress for Cultural Freedom, which many know from Frances Stonor Saunders’ book, Who Paid The Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War. Perhaps less well known from Saunders’ book is the bizarre story of how intelligence agencies sought to take charge of classical music. I recently talked to Howard Blake, pianist and conductor and arguably Britain’s best-known living composer, about his reading of the allegations made by Saunders. I ran into Blake amid the melee of those demonstrating against Zionism in High Street Kensington after the killing of anti-Zionist peace protestors on the Freedom Flotilla to Gaza. (The Israeli embassy is in nearby Billionaire’s Row). He was ruminating on writing something in solidarity with those who died. Blake, most famous for his work for the Oscar-nominated film, The Snowman, was commissioned by the Philharmonia Orchestra for the 30th birthday of Princess Diana in 1991, as well as music to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the United Nations Organization in 1995. One would think that Howard Blake, awarded the Order of the British Empire by the queen, would have baulked at allegations about intelligence services controlling classical music, given his success and his own place in “the establishment,” but the man whose dramatic oratorio Benedictus was premiered in Westminster Cathedral with Cardinal Hume as narrator, says the U.S. Congress for Cultural Freedom not only cast a shadow on his life but continues to affect the lives of young composers today. Howard Blake: If you even suggest the idea, people laugh at you and say that you are a crazed conspiracy theorist. However, when I read Frances Stonor Saunders’ book, it confirmed something that I have known from my own personal experience but was never able to prove or even completely understand. It had been impossible to understand why such a policy would have been adopted, or why people could have been taken in, in the way that they were. Afshin Rattansi: Some would surely argue that composers complaining about CIA and MI6 involvement in preventing their work from being performed is the kind of thing one might expect from disgruntled artists? HB: Of course, some might say just that – “you’re saying this because no one wants to play your music and it is just sour grapes.” However, I have some justification for saying it because I have become a successful composer and I actually have somehow found my way through this maze. But the maze has haunted me and troubled my life right from my second year at the Royal Academy of Music until now, half a century. At 18, I won a scholarship to the Royal Academy as a pianist, taking composition as a sec- ond study. The first term was fine. My composition professor was Howard Ferguson and the first thing he asked me to do was to make a folk song arrangement (in the English tradition of Vaughan Williams or Walton, both then still alive and working.) We were looking at classical models, studying counterpoint, harmony, orchestration, and so on. In my second term, he raised the hurdle and set me a theme by Bartok on which to write variations. It was European and exciting! This really set me alight, and I wrote my first serious piece of classical composition – Variations on a theme of Bartok. It was entered for a prize, and my piano professor Harold Craxton was so impressed that he asked his star pupil Thorunn Tryggvaason to perform it at her final recital. But something very odd happened at this moment and everything changed. The word went around that one had to write twelve-tone music. This wasn’t a new thing since, let’s face it, it had started around 1900. Fifty-eight years later, we were suddenly being instructed to write atonally. Surely this was just one of many exercises as part of your degree? HB: Yes, as such it would have been fine. I remember saying to Howard Ferguson, “Well, let’s study it,” and he said, “No, it wouldn’t be for you.” It was a strange time. He suddenly resigned. It seemed that he had realized that what he was writing was no longer acceptable. Somehow or other, I was dumped along with him, and I stopped writing music. I was nineteen. Did they say you were basically very conservative? Would you say that about yourself? HB: I happened to have written a few things at school in Brighton, but I wasn’t at the Royal Academy to study composition. It was their idea that I did so, actually. I showed them a piece, and they liked it and they said I ought to study composition. It hadn’t occurred to me whether I was conventional or conservative or anything else. I basically won a scholarship to study piano. I was playing Beethoven, Chopin and Bach, and so on. I just adored great classical music and suddenly had to grapple with this sea change in attitude. So, I just gave up writing. I thought that I must have no aptitude for it. I did approach the BBC, Sadler’s Wells and others, I remember, but didn’t get anywhere. I felt I was a square peg in a round hole. Because “they” were going for atonal classical music? Who were the top classical contemporaries? HB: Well, Peter Maxwell-Davies, Benjamin Britten, Tippett ... but there was a whole sheaf of 12-tone composers like Humphrey Searle, Elizabeth Lutyens, Thea Musgrave, and they were played at The Proms and were held up as “state of the art.” When did it dawn on you that there was a conspiracy? HB: I didn’t see it as a “conspiracy”; I saw it as a policy adopted by members of the musical establishment, who presumably had their reasons for taking it. I took the attitude as a fact of life, a fait accompli. It didn’t dawn on me for a very long time, because I moved away from the classical music world and into the film world. So, I “grew up” as a composer for feature films, where the problem didn’t arise. However, The Snowman has achieved its gigantic success very much because it is pigeonholed within film and NOT classical music. Therefore, it is no threat. For serious concert work it is far more difficult. It only dawned on me that such a weird conspiracy could have emanated from the CIA when I read Saunders’ book. It is far easier to believe that a secret cabal of musically ignorant, politically motivated paranoids could create such a system than to believe that any people who genuinely love the wonderful art of music could even dream of causing such damage! But surely Beethoven and Bach were considered unconventional in their own times, and so you were showing your own lack of understanding of the history of music by not understanding this relatively newer composition mode? HB: I was trying to find a way to express myself and, of course, I was looking at all sorts of modern music and listening to all sorts of music, just as I continue to listen to every sort of music to this day. But as far as my experience went as a student, the advice to restrict myself to atonalism wasn’t very helpful and I gave up composition and presumed I was not any good at it. I didn’t know what to do and I had become a nuisance, and the RAM seemed to want to get rid of me, except that I had won a three-year scholarship. At that moment, I became interested in film. It seemed like a free medium. It appeared that people could make films any way they wanted. And they didn’t have films with completely black screens! They were expressing stuff that was actually about stuff. Film also used music in a completely free way. And there didn’t seem to be any restriction on film or its music at all. I wanted to immerse myself in film, and I tried to get a place at a film school but without success. I left the Royal Academy in 1960 and managed to get a job at the National Film Theatre [NFT] as a film projectionist. All I had was a degree in piano playing, which wasn’t very useful. So I got that job and immersed myself in cinema. I made a film in my spare time. I got a little group together and I found this experience marvelous. I could compose my own music and put it on the film soundtrack. I was absolutely riveted by all the people who were making films at the time. And I met, believe it or not, Visconti, Fellini, Vincente Minelli, Jean Renoir and Fritz Lang who came to lecture. I recorded them! It was an amazing place to be. This was around 1961. I became fascinated by the music of film, and we used to run films from Brazil, China, Iran, Poland, Algeria, Ukraine, Sweden – from everywhere in the world. It was fascinating to see and hear. There was a lot of jazz on film, and I also became interested in that. All of this was completely outside the practice of any music academy at that time, which tended to dismiss jazz as garbage. After a while working at the NFT, I found that I missed music so much that I started to play piano in pubs and clubs, and this led me into the session world where I played at Abbey Road on recording sessions. This, in its turn, led toward writing for film, and, with the help of Bernard Herrmann and Laurie Johnson, I got to work composing and conducting The Avengers TV series. One could say that I became an outsider in relation to the classical music world and found a home in the film and studio world. I remember an amusing example of the attitudes of that time. Driving back from The Avengers at Elstree Studios, I dropped in on Harold Craxton. He asked what I was doing. I said, I was writing and conducting scores for 25-piece big band for The Avengers at Elstree. “Is that jazz,” he asked? I said, “Yes, essentially I suppose it is jazz-based.” “You learnt to play jazz, did you?” he asked. I said I did. “How long did that take you? An afternoon?” he replied. I thought that such ignorance was beyond belief. Despite my distancing in regard to the classical establishment, I hadn’t given up on serious composition. I wrote a Symphony in One Movement during this time of pubs and clubs, and finished it whilst working at Elstree. I had found a small-time publisher for something I had written. His name was Richard Franks. He was Polish and before the war had been the music director at Krakow Ballet. He thought I was a good composer and that I should take this piece to the BBC. The BBC were totally uninterested. And who was the gatekeeper at the BBC, at that time? HB: We are talking about Willliam Glock, BBC Controller of Music from 1959 to 1972. Glock put the block on mainstream music composed in England (my friend Malcom Arnold was one of the principal victims and frequently said so). Glock had a henchman/assistant called Hans Keller, who was very much … well, the UK satirical magazine, Private Eye, called him Hans Killer. Glock abolished all light music and publishers in London and they all went out of business, as did the light orchestras. For me, I believe that light music was a bridge that introduced the greater public to the idea and language of serious music, and for many years the BBC damaged that link. (Many of the greatest composers wrote light music – Sibelius, Elgar, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, to name a few.) Glock’s theory was that it was all right to play early music. Romantic music presented a problem. What they really wanted was atonal music – “cutting edge.” Reading Frances Stoner Saunders’ book confirmed what I always felt but really couldn’t understand. It appears, and it’s documented, that the CIA, working for the U.S. government, had come to the conclusion that the Soviet Communist government of the U.S.S.R. was occupying the high ground in terms of culture. It had the best ballet companies in the world, and they were considered the greatest performers of traditional ballet. (Nureyev caused an enormous sensation.) Prokofiev wrote the most successful ballet of the 20th century under Stalin – Romeo and Juliet. He was a truly major composer. The U.S.S.R. was producing the best violinists, like Oistrakh, the best pianists, like Sviatoslav Richter. They had the best conductors … and all this just wouldn’t do. The CIA, burdened by the American cultural inferiority complex of that period, seemed to fear that their culture was regarded as producing “hillbilly” stuff. Elvis Presley and so on. “We are losing points,” they said, “we have got to prove that the whole point of the capitalist system is that it is free and people can do whatever they like, and it takes the ideas of the mind forward, and we have got to prove that the communist bloc is actually looking backward and is not free.” This led to them awarding a hefty budget from the CIA to promote this view. For instance, composers would be sought who would exemplify this principle. They discovered that the composer, John Cage, had written a totally silent piano sonata. “He comes on and just sits there and looks at the music and just thinks about it. That is really interesting. So, we’ll push that.” I mean, somebody must have said, ‘‘but don’t you think that is nuts?” I mean, it would appear to anyone with a brain that that is nuts. But they said, “We like John Cage.” So, Cage became a major figure, all of a sudden. Now, becoming a major figure in the arts does not happen by accident. It has to be backed up by the cognoscenti. It has to be proclaimed worthwhile. About 1970, I started to realize that, due to the above situation, the chances were remote that any serious music that I wrote was likely to be hailed by the classical world. It was acceptable to write “commercially” to keep the economy circulating but far less acceptable to interfere in “high culture,” which was closely monitored and guarded. I had done very well for a while, writing every sort of music imaginable for the media but had again felt that this “wasn’t what I wanted to do.” I wanted to write “real” music that stood alone and that said something, and somehow I had been unable to do that. I took time out and decided to rethink my entire outlook. I thought, ‘‘I am going to write music that I want to write. If it turns out that it is considered conservative or rubbish or bad or boring, well… tough, because I can only write the way that I can write and do the best that I can do, and I am only alive once. I will write regardless. What can anyone do about it?” I got out of London and moved to the country in Sussex. I started re-examining the whole of classical music in a way I had never done before. I started re-examining the forms of Beethoven, Stravinsky, Bach, Schubert, Mozart, and I rediscovered the fantastic world of great orchestral music, which I had never truly experienced. It was an inspiration. I didn’t have my own original style but was searching for one. In 1973 I wrote a piece, Diversions for Cello, which later became Diversions for Cello and Orchestra. It was eventually done with the Royal Philharmonic in 1989. Not much of conspiracy then – the Royal Philharmonic was performing your work! HB: Sixteen years is quite a long time to wait for a performance. But you’re right, it did happen! Francis Stonor Saunders mentions another dimension of CIA involvement, when she says that art forms were seen to be dominated by white males. The thought was: ‘’Let’s find a black singer and make her into a great diva’’. They discovered Leontyne Price and gave her huge promotion. As Saunders put it, Moscow at the time could say that the “U.S.A. claims to be free but is killing black people down in Alabama and denying human rights.’’ The idea of promoting those like Price would help to change this perception, and it started to become another policy of the Agency. And so it was, many claim, the policy vis-à-vis the visual arts – but surely now the Berlin Wall has come down, it doesn’t have any effect? HB: Well, up until the Wall came down, the BBC tended to only support anyone within the avant-garde, which fitted in with this attitude… the same attitude that exists in the visual arts. Anybody painting a picture of anything recognizable would be laughed at. But even after the fall of Soviet Communism, the attitude still lurks. It still hasn’t been got rid off, because of the legacy of decisions made in the 1950s. And it is laughable that some are saying we are doing it because of the Soviets, when all of that stopped years ago. It simply became integral to the way universities and institutions were set up, and nobody has so far got around to changing it. I’ll give you an example of this. Two weeks ago, I went to the giving of prizes at the Royal College of Music as a guest of the director Colin Wilson. Prince Charles was there, and they gave out prizes for the best pianist and the best cellist, and then they came to prizes for composition. And they gave a doctorate to somebody I had never heard of – a 60-year-old Swede. And the grateful recipient read out that he had spent his whole life examining ways of making sounds from instruments that nobody else had ever made and that he didn’t believe in the relationship of the audience to music. He believed that the sounds that are made exist as entities in a world of his own making and that that world has a right to exist. And I thought – more madness! It is the same old stuff, and it saddened me to think that people are pouring millions into institutions and that opera houses are being built around the world for this. Yes, they are perfectly happy to give money to anybody who plays, providing they play stuff that is at least 200 years old. Or, that nobody wants to listen to. Surely, there must be at least one promising student composer whom we could all be proud of – and we’d actually like to listen to? But surely the policy has failed when it comes to you, given your popularity? HB: Well, I have never managed to be able to talk to anyone at the BBC about the music that I write. I have now reached the stage in my life – I have reached opus 620 – that I despair for younger compos- ers. I despair of Faber Music, which actually took my work, The Snowman, and which made all the money for their firm, only to invest it in people who write the sort of garbage we’re discussing here and stamp on everything else. I finally got all of my music rights back in 2004 and I publish myself. I have a crusading energy to do that and now sell my music over the web and get to people from all over the world. This is through no help of the “establishment” and, if I told you the appalling story of Faber Music litigating against me between 1998-2000, you would know what I mean. But the legal system makes such revelation difficult. What about the process itself? Are you really suggesting that the heads of top classical music institutions were in touch with the security forces? HB: They appear out of nowhere. They get lots of funding and they are played on the BBC and their names are littered all over the world, and one asks, “Who is listening to this stuff?” There’s one famous, notable example: Elliott Carter, the American composer who is now over 100 and has been massively pushed. He came over to London several years ago and had the whole of the Royal Festival Hall with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the whole of the outside of the Festival Hall with a huge placard proclaiming the “Elliot Carter Festival.” But are you suggesting that UK arts administration officials went over to the U.S. and talked to Agency officials, or are you talking about MI6? HB: I believe MI6 cooperates with CIA, but I wouldn’t know how. Actual art administrators whom you would meet at concerts or whatever? HB: I went to the biggest concert of the Elliot Carter Festival out of interest and thought, “This is costing a fortune.” I wondered who it was all for. I bought a ticket in the side-stalls, and I sat there and I looked over and saw William Glock, now retired and in his 60s. He was the pope of that whole school of making music incomprehensible. He was there along with Sally Cavender, the PR director from Faber Music, one or two from Boosey and Hawkes publishers – one or two critics and some BBC staff. All in all, about sixteen people. There was no one else in the whole auditorium – not one – except for me who was looking at them. I heard Mr. Glock say to them in the bar, “What a resounding success this is!” But what proof? HB: Faber and Faber were evidently tied to Encounter magazine, the literary magazine co-founded in 1953 by Faber poet Stephen Spender and later co-edited by neoconservative, Irving Kristol. I know that, say, Mayakovsky is out of print, but I would never think that Faber and Faber has been told by MI6 to make it go out of print. HB: I think it would have been a bit more subtle than that. So, it is the legacy of that Cold War thinking? They don’t need MI6 agents in publishers’ offices? HB: I think, it’s become integral, institutionalized – in the Arts Council, the universities. You mean that the next generation notices what is preferred and what styles to take up? HB: Yes, indeed. Here’s a story to prove what I’m trying to say. Several years ago, I went into a piano bar in Kensington, and there was a boy playing the piano. I got talking to him and asked what he was doing. He said he was a 5th year student at the Royal College of Music studying composition. I asked him what sort of stuff interested him. After all, he was playing Gershwin and things like “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square.” It didn’t sound like 5th year Royal College. When he said that he was doing this for money, I asked what he wrote for himself. He replied that he had actually won the top prize at the Royal College for the best modern music piece. I congratulated him and said that that was marvelous and asked whether I could take a look. He came over to visit me and brought out a score from his bag – a typical Stockhausen-looking post-Schoenberg/ Boulez type of thing – and I looked at it. In the first bar it had 19 hemi-demisemi quavers played by the entire viola section in the space of a crochet. I asked, whether he thought it was playable. He said, “no.” I asked whether he could sing it. And he said, “no.” I asked whether he knew what it sounded like, and he said that it didn’t matter what it sounded like. He had won a prize and that, in order to get a degree, this was the way one had to write. Then he said he wanted to write film music like me. He had won a very notable prize that was against his very nature and intelligence. But what about the fact that music that once seems obscure and from the academy then filters down to popular imagination? HB: That is certainly the thought that is fed to us and what we are led to believe. But how true is it? Most of the real masterpieces, once given a decent performance, were recognized immediately. Tchaikovsky attended the first performance of Carmen and immediately said it would become the most popular opera of all time. He was right. It did, of course, take years to circulate and get known worldwide, but that is a different matter. Nowadays, with instant communication, a different time frame is in operation. It is more the case that the connoisseur expects a work to be incomprehensible and difficult, otherwise it must be suspect! I wrote a clarinet concerto for Thea King back in 1984 – a serious, passionate piece, not light music but using melodic lines, counterpoint, harmony and orchestration – it was commissioned by Thea for the English Chamber Orchestra. After the performance, I met a city banker at the patron’s dinner. He asked me whether I was the composer, and went on to say that he “instinctively distrusts anything he can understand.” Well, if that is the establishment view – that music has to be incomprehensible to be any good … well, we are hearing the echoes of the U.S. Congress for Cultural Freedom, set up way back in 1950. These are the symptoms of the CIA and Ford Foundation-backed International Association for Cultural Freedom, sixty years on. CP Afshin Rattansi is co-host and executive producer of Rattansi & Ridley, which broadcasts internationally every Saturday at 2032 GMT on Press TV. He can be reached at afshinrattansi@hotmail.com

PASSION OF MARY

BARGAIN OF MONTH Howard BLAKE (b.1938) The Passion of Mary, op.577 (2006) [57:21] Four Songs of the Nativity, op.415 (1990) [19:04] Patricia Rozario (soprano); Robert William Blake (treble); Richard Edgar–Wilson (tenor); David Wilson–Johnson (bass–baritone) London Voices/Terry Edwards Royal Philharmonic Orchestra/Howard Blake rec. 12-13 August 2009, Studio 1, Abbey Road, London. DDD NAXOS 8.572453 [76:25] The British have long had a tradition of choral singing. By the turn of the 19th century into the 20th century there were choral festivals all over the country. The Leeds Triennial and the Three Choirs remain the best known and indigenous composers wrote prolifically for the amateur singers. And what a line of composition it is: Elgar, Stanford and Parry wrote innumerable works for chorus and orchestra. More recently we’ve had Peter Racine Fricker’s A Vision Of Judgement and David Blake’s Lumina (a superb work which has been unfairly neglected) (both for Leeds), and John McCabe’s Voyage, Geoffrey Burgon’s Requiem and Gerard Schurmann’s Piers Plowman (for the Worcester, Hereford and Gloucester meetings of the Three Choirs Festival). The list goes on and on. Now we have Howard Blake’s The Passion of Mary which, put simply, just had to be written. Having set the Stabat Mater, Blake realised that more was needed as he hadn’t said all that he wanted to say, especially, as he realised, there was no setting of the Passion from Mary’s point of view. This work was the outcome. It is firmly of the British school of choral music. We must not forget that Blake, when younger, was a boy chorister and sang in the choir whilst studying at the Royal Academy of Music in London. He took part in a performance of VW’s Sancta Civitas in the presence of the great man himself. The Passion of Mary was given its British premiere at his 70th birthday concert in the Cadogan Hall, in London, in October 2008. It stunned the audience with its fluency, directness and feeling of ecstasy. The effect was spectacular – overcome with emotion, the audience sat in awe at the end, feeling that applause was, perhaps, not quite right after such an experience. I was there and can attest to that feeling http://www.musicweb-international.com/SandH/2008/Jul-Dec08/blake2810.htm. That performance was of an exceptional quality and some of those performers have been reunited for this recording. Although playing for less than an hour, Blake manages, with the most economic of means, to tell the whole story of Christ, from Mary’s pregnancy to the Crucifixion and after. Following a brief yet intensely effective orchestral prelude, and a bass recitative, the soprano (Mary) sings the Magnificat, to music of high elation. The vocal line flies aloft in a finely judged orchestral setting. The orchestra is used throughout in a most restrained manner and only raises its voice once – at the time of the Crucifixion - in music of great strength and fury. This is both mystical in feel and magical in conception. Blake’s son sings the small but telling part of Jesus as a child, a wonderful stroke of imagination this, and the tenor takes the part as a man. Throughout there are choruses, recitatives, arias, duets and scenas, all of which follow one another easily and grow out of the argument. One of the most striking moments is when Satan, a suitably oily performance from David Wilson–Johnson, tries to tempt Christ. This is written, save for four urgent chords from the orchestra, as an unaccompanied scene. The work ends with a chorus worthy of Gabrieli, with joyful shouts of Gloria! The words “masterpiece” and “a work of genius” are bandied about far too easily these days, but here they can be used with confidence for this, surely, is Blake’s masterpiece, and, from a purely musical point of view, it is a work of genius. As my friend, and colleague, Robert Matthew-Walker wrote, “The Passion of Mary makes an immediate and lasting impact on the attentive listener, and there is no doubting the conviction of the composer and the directness of his musical utterance.” I cannot improve on that. This is superb stuff in a performance which is of the highest quality. I was at the sessions and can confirm the immense amount of work which went into making this recording. Patricia Rozario, whose voice Blake had in his head whilst writing, glows as Mary, making the most of her long scenes, and taking the wide leaps in the vocal line as if they were the easiest things she had ever sung. Considering that the part covers more than two octaves this is, in itself, quite a feat. Richard Edgar–Wilson (Jesus, as a man) sings with an easy fluency and fine diction, displaying a beautiful high G, so soft as to make one gasp. David Wilson–Johnson (as both the Prophet and Satan) is full-voiced and creates both parts with such skill that you’d be hard pushed to realise that it was the same singer. He is especially impressive as Satan as he descends to a low E? in the temptation scene. Last, but by no means least, Robert William Blake (Jesus as a boy) imbues the part with a quiet authority, displaying a beautiful delicacy in his delivery, and a full understanding of the music. London Voices sing with real gravitas – whether in meditative mode or when screaming for blood. How could they not when they were trained by a man - Terry Edwards - who, I have said this before, is the best choral trainer in London. The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra is with Blake all the way, giving their all, especially when allowed music to themselves. The orchestration is magnificent, with some eloquent moments for the harp. Blake brings out all the voices with great clarity. Michael Ponder’s production is a real asset, for the sound is big, yet even in the loudest episodes everything is clear and precise. There are also passages of such breathtaking pianissimo that one is on the edge of one’s seat. The sound is the best I have ever heard from Naxos. All in all, this is one of the very best CDs it has been my pleasure to hear and report upon. And we haven’t finished, for as a, very generous, coupling we have the Four Songs of the Nativity for chorus and brass. These are delightful settings of texts taken from Mediaeval English Verse (Penguin Books). Although not easy to perform, they make a lovely set of alternative carols if not of the community singing type. Ranging from devotional to racy this work makes a good conclusion to a very special disk. Choirs looking for new repertoire need look no further. Here are two works which can communicate easily and make a real impression on the audience. A very good booklet, with full texts, completes an issue which should be in every collection. This music is far too good to miss. Bob Briggs

PASSION OF MARY (GAPPLEGATE)

Gapplegate Music Review Wednesday, May 12, 2010 Howard Blake: Modern Choral Music from England I first came upon the music of Howard Blake via the soundtrack to the memorable animated film The Snowman. In particular the main theme as sung by boy treble with orchestra really captivated. It was a little like a cross between The Moody Blues's Days of Future Passed and middle-period Keith Jarrett. Hearing it still gives me goose bumps. So when I saw this new Naxos release of Blake in a more "serious" concert choral zone, I jumped on the chance to hear and review it. Blake seems like a natural when it comes to vocal-orchestral expression. Everything he writes in these two works (The Passions of Mary; Four Songs of the Nativity) seems to lay out in a kind of idiomatic near-perfection. Howard Blake himself conducts the soloists, the London Voices, and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra for this recording, which seems definitive. The music falls in a 20th Century tradition of such works by Walton, Vaughn Williams and others similar. That is to say, it uses extended tonal-traditional means to express lyrically the dramatic import of the narrative texts. The Passion of Mary follows a modern oratorio vein; For Songs of the Nativity uses the song form for some memorable Christmas fare. Mr. Blake is a composer of talent. These are some beautiful and moving settings. If you are an Anglophile in matters classical, you will no doubt want this one. I will file it happily on my "modern English composers" shelf. That is, when I am not listening to and enjoying it.

CHAMBER MUSIC

Howard BLAKE (b. 1938) Flute Quintet Op.493 (1996) [18:04] Shakespeare Songs for tenor and string quartet Op.378 (1987) [23:10] Trio for flute, cello and harp Op.559 (1962 re-arranged 2005) [9:04] Farewell My Gentle Harp - for tenor and harp Op.517 (1976 revised 2000) [4:58] Penillion for flute and harp Op.448 (1975 revised 1993) [8:30] Martyn Hill (tenor); English Serenata. rec. October-November 2005, St Lawrence’s Parish Church, Mickleton, Gloucestershire MERIDIAN CDE84553 [63:44] This is a delightful disc, high in opus numbers but also high in quality too. The Flute Quintet dates from 1996 and is cast in four movements. Warm lyricism and avian calls are the index for this, with the flute singing its verdant morning song in the opening Allegro Cantando. After a vibrant Scherzo there’s a lyrically textured slow movement and a light-hearted march finale with some strummed accompanying figures to vary textures. A rather earlier work is the Shakespeare Songs for tenor and string quartet. Blake takes well known songs from As You Like It and Twelfth Night, as well as single songs from Cymbeline, The Tempest and Love’s Labours Lost. The result is a cycle that confounds expectations. None sounds very much like anyone else’s settings. The bucolic old-time settings of, for example, When Icicles hang by the wall is not replicated in Blake’s own setting, nor are there Finzi-esque moments either. Blake paints his words with discreet delicacy, not playing up the ‘freeze’ in Blow, blow thou winter wind, though he certainly does push the tenor very high in Full fathom five, the more to accentuate its eerie sense of loss. He does so again in Come, away death with the same result - Blake sees things differently from the more baritonal consolations that other have wrought here. If there is an influence, I would sense Britten, especially in When Icicles. The Trio for flute, cello and harp is an arrangement of a 1962 work for flute, clarinet and piano. It survives the transition delightfully. French in orientation, cleanly and clearly lyric, generous in its melodic grace, it is a work of perfectly poised charm. Farewell My Gentle Harp is another vehicle for Martyn Hill, a Gaelic lament and truly lovely. Meanwhile Penillion for flute and harp – other versions exist – is inspired by Welsh music, though gently. I’ve heard it in its incarnation for violin and piano, and it’s perhaps not too surprising that this flute and harp version sounds far less ‘Carpathian’ in one or two of the variations, and rather more sweetly emollient. It ends a beautifully performed and enticing disc. Full praise, then, to Hill, always a most articulate singer, and to the players of the English Serenata for their mellifluous and sensitive playing, to the fine recording and to the booklet with its full texts. Jonathan Woolf A beautifully performed and enticing disc ... see Full Review

kids top 10 classical music

Writing in the Guardian, British critic Tom Service reports on a new poll: British children like Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky - but their favorite (allegedly) classical music is the theme to Harry Potter, by John Williams. Service is appalled, but rationalizes, “Harry Potter’s victory shows that children love lavishly orchestrated music, and that they understand that you can create worlds of magic and mystery with a symphony orchestra.” Here’s the complete list of winners: Kids’ top 10 classical music 1 John Williams Harry Potter 2 Howard Blake Walking in the Air (The Snowman) 3 Sergei Prokofiev Peter’s Theme (Peter and the Wolf) 4 Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy (The Nutcracker) 5 Sergei Prokofiev The Duck Scene (Peter and the Wolf) 6 Paul Dukas The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (Fantasia) 7 Edward Elgar Pomp and Circumstance Op. 39, No. 4 (Fantasia) 8 Johann Pachelbel Canon 9 Sergei Prokofiev Romeo and Juliet 10 Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov Flight of the Bumblebee

MusicWebInternational survey of Howard Blakes's discography by Rob Barnett

mf files

Howard Blake is an accomplished pianist and composer who studied at the Royal School of Music in the UK. He composed music for the stage, radio and television, most notably incidental music for several episodes of "The Avengers", before establishing a career in film music. This career includes some stints as orchestrator for other composers such as Henry Mancini and a long CV of scores in his own name. His film music constitutes a large part of his overall output, though Blake has not neglected concert pieces having composed concertos for Clarinet, Piano and Violin as well as an oratorio called "Benedictus". His name came to prominence in the public eye when he composed the music for a production based on the book "The Snowman". This was soon turned into an animated film and "The Snowman" is now regularly broadcast on television at Christmas time. The familiar theme tune "Walking in the Air" was a big hit for the singer Aled Jones, at that time a boy soprano. The team behind this first animation went on to create others in the same style including "Grandpa" and "The Bear". Howard Blake even makes a cameo appearance in "The Bear" as the pianist at the window, while writer and illustrator Raymond Briggs appears as the smiling face in the moon. For a number of years, Howard Blake played an active role in the Performing Rights Society, and in 1994 he received an OBE for his services to music. Howard Blake has also written pieces for a variety of instruments and combinations. Among several for solo piano is his "Lifecycle" which, like Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier and similar works by other composers, is a set of 24 pieces in all the keys including the "Walking Song" in A. This is just another example of his inclination towards the classical traditions of music, which is evident in some of his pieces. "The Snowman" is now regularly performed as a stage event during the Christmas Season, for example at London's Sadler's Wells Theatre at Christmas 2006. Films by Howard Blake: *An Elephant called Slowly - with the Virginia McKenna/Bill Travers team * The Duellists - historical drama by Ridley Scott * Agatha * The Changeling - the film was scored by Rick Wilkins but Blake supplied the music box theme * Flash (Gordon) - remembered for the songs by Queen, Blake did some arranging and the incidental music for the film, full of lovely synth music which somehow evokes the retro look of the film * The Snowman - the theme song "Walking in the Air" was a big hit for boy soprano Aled Jones (though he didn't sing on the original film) * The Lords of Discipline * Amityville 3-D * A Midsummer Night's Dream (1996) * Grandpa - a Snowman follow-on * The Bear - another animation from "The Snowman" team and also based on a Raymond Briggs book TV music by Howard Blake: * The Avengers - incidental music for a total of 7 episodes, substituting for the series resident composer Laurie Johnson * Play for Today - the episode called "Stronger than the Sun" * BBC2 Playhouse - a couple of episodes of this * S.O.S. Titanic * The Moon Stallion - a children's fantasy series * The Canterbury Ghost The soundtrack to the Snowman starts with the narrated version of the story which makes a great bedtime story for children leading up to Christmas, and is reminiscent of Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf" story. In addition the CD also has the soundtrack on its own without the narration, and this is great fun music for children of all ages. The Piano Score version of the full film is quite tricky to play, but there are simpler versions of the main theme alone or a suite from the film. The theme song is available in a piano plus vocal arrangement (with guitar chords) from MusicRoom, and if you visit di-arezzo.com and perform a search for "Snowman" or "Howard Blake" you will find a wealth of school arrangments for many instruments. Howard Blake - music for piano and strings album album cover Blake's "Lifecycle" for piano is available from this link at MusicRoom and this link at MusicRoom lists many other pieces for various instruments. His "Music for Piano and Strings" listed below is a good example of his concert or chamber music style. The album includes a collection of "Jazz" pieces for violin and piano, which like Shostakovich's "Jazz Suites" are not true Jazz, but simply lighter less serious works. The Howard Blake official website is at www.howardblake.com. * The Snowman - Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com * Flash Gordon (Queen songs plus dialogue mostly) - Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com * Flash Gordon (Howard Blake score - but very rare) - Amazon.com * Music for Piano and Strings (with Howard Blake playing the piano) - Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com

HOWARD BLAKE AND FILM MUSIC

mardi, avril 11, 2006 Howard Blake about film music April 2006 - I had the opportunity to ask questions about "film music" to Howard Blake who wrote numerous concert works and film scores (including THE SNOWMAN, THE DUELLISTS, A MONTH IN THE COUNTRY [1988 Anthony Asquith Award], THE LORDS OF DISCIPLINE...). - Jean-Francois Houben: Maestro Blake, you wrote a lot of concert works (with public performances since 1974) but since your studies at the Royal Academy of Music, you are interested by the movies (you were projectionist at the National Film Theatre ; you directed a movie) and by film music. Several composers working for the movies and writing for the concert hall have a very critical (sometimes cynical) attitude concerning their own film music (for example, Miklos Rozsa -- you had lunch with -- judged his musical life as a double life). What are your current feelings about "film music"? - Howard BLAKE: As a student at the Royal Academy of Music, I studied composition and piano between 1957and 1960 (classical - I toured with a violinist playing Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Franck, Ravel... etc) on a bourse but became disenchanted with current ideas of 12-tone, serial... I saw Potemkin with an orchestral score at the age of about 19 and decided that the future of art lay in the combination of music and images (film images). I applied to study film rather than music but at that time nobody could understand what I was talking about, and they wanted me to do a course in photography. The University grant people decided I should stay at the RAM, where I did very little. I spent much time at the National Film Theatre and wrote extensively on the philosophy of art/music/cinema etc. After college I got a job at the National Film Theatre... which I loved- I met Jean Renoir, Fritz Lang, Vincente Minelli, Jacques Tati, Orson Welles, Chris Marker- all sorts of people! I made my own 16mm film which I wrote, edited and composed the music for. It was terrible but good enough to be shown in the film theatre as a short with Maltese Falcon- believe it or not! But I realised my gift was music and not script or direction. I was very interested in the fact that film used every sort of music and decided I must learn all sorts. I took jobs in pubs and nightclubs as a pianist playing jazz, pop, rock, latin american... and one night was 'discovered' and asked if I would like to be a recording session pianist working at Abbey Road. I enjoyed this and played with good people: John McLaughlin, Jimmy Page, Tom Jones, Cliff Richard, Sylvie Vartan, Francis Lai... among many. Whilst doing this, I wrote a 12-minute symphony sub-titled 'Impressions of a City' which I wanted to film. However instead I met Bernard Herrmann who thought it was brilliant and asked me to do some arranging and recommended me to Laurie Johnson at Elstree. I played piano and organ on The Avengers and then was asked to take over as composer/musical director, which I did (1967/1968). At the same time, I wrote many commercials for TV (204!), feature films (Some Will Some Won't, Elephant called slowly, All the way up... (...) At that point, I (...) realised I was not doing what I wanted to do. I (...) re-thought the situation, deciding I would try again to write a 'Symphony with Images'. I (...) moved to a watermill in Sussex where I worked at such a thing- but without result. However my composition improved a lot and I began to write 'serious' works as they are called- Piano Quartet, Diversions for cello, Cantata 'Song of St Francois', Benedictus' oratorio. Suddenly all sorts of people wanted me to write: Ridley Scott and David Puttman came to see me for 'The Duellists', Lynn Seymour asked me to compose a ballet for The Queen, The Royal Shakespeare Company asked me to write for the theatre, and Richard Williams asked me to write for animation. But I still hadn't created my own film in which the music drives the images. I gave up the idea (...) and I returned to London to be a 'pen for hire' again, buying my present studio in Kensington in early 1982 to be MD [Musical Director] on 'The Hunger' for Tony Scott. I had just started on this when The Snowman happened. I had seen an 8' pencil animatic in October 1981 and suggested to TVC that one could do a film with no dialogue and had recorded a piano demo. I saw it as the sudden opening of a window onto what I always wanted to do and I took full advantage! Snowman in England has become an icon and is very successfull (platinum disk, top of the pops, TV every Christmas for 24 years, plus stage show, concert versions, etc, etc...). I hoped this would lead to many more things of the sort- open an avenue. It is true that I did two more similar animations (Granpa in 1988 and The Bear in 1998) but they were surrounded by trouble and contractual manoeuvres and therefore hampered, to an extent sabotaged, which is a pity. I have never taken a view like Miklos Rozsa and Bernard Herrmann because I started with a different view. ( I discussed it with them at length when we all had lunch at the Gay Hussar that time). There are many different genres within film and if you are lucky enough to be asked to do one, you should be aware of what it is you have taken on. Of course if you want to make money that is something else. Many of the most interesting things produce no money and many of the most boring produce a lot of money!! I took very much the view of Mozart, that as a composer you must respond to the wishes of the time and do your best possible work in every case. This is not perhaps a typical view and is the exact opposite of Wagner's - but then I like Mozart and I don't like Wagner! At the end of my website biography [http://www.howardblake.com/], there is a note of 'what I believe' from the Encyclopaedia of Contemporary Composers. (...) I think that the 'Symphony with Images' I always dreamt of found a way of being born on STAGE rather than FILM! ...for the problem with film is that it is enmeshed in finance, politics, propaganda, stars and directors with egos needing gigantic streams of money and publicity and flattery...The great art of film with its sister-muse of music which promised such fine possibilities of beauty in the days of European Silent Cinema has been hijacked by book and theatre agents and mass exploitation of lowest human common denominators. If one wants to experiment one has to face up to the fact that one will have to pay for it oneself. And it's expensive. Lastly, it is true I have adapted one or two scores for concert performance -Duellists and Riddle of the Sands at the request of the RPO [Royal Philharmonic Orchestra]. The only ones that work for me are the 3 animation scores. They stand up as music because they were composed as music. Otherwise scores are best heard WITH film because that is what they are designed for. - JFH: You are now a notorious composer, pianist, conductor and musical director. Several years ago, you did some orchestrations a.o. for English film composer Stanley Myers (1933-1993). Can you share some memories about him? - Howard BLAKE: Stanley was a terrific person who helped people and loved music of all sorts ; he was interested in and enthusiastic about everything. He was highly intelligent and had read PPE at Balliol Oxford. I met him in the period when I was still playing in clubs and he had just landed his first TV film, perhaps it was 'Poor Cow' or 'Up the junction', I can't remember... He asked me to play keyboards and I wrote out some funky Jimmy Smith licks. We became great friends and went to many concerts together, from Pink Floyd to Stockhausen, with different girl friends (he had more than anybody I have ever met). I remember going to the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis big band at Ronnie Scott's with Quincy Jones, John Williams the guitarist and Stanley. He often gave dinner parties and invited very interesting people - Jerry Goldsmith one night (who played us a tape of a Cantata he had written) -Roy Budd (who he introduced to everybody) - the great Hollywood arrangers (...) who had worked for Gershwin and argued about the different qualities of a cello A or D-string. I played classical pipe organ at the BBC with jazz rhythm section on 'All Gas and Gaiters'. On 'Kaleidoscope' I played many different instruments as he loved to use many different sounds. That was a big break for him. I loved the funky-sort of waltz of the titles and the very original suspense music with - I think - azikwe xylophone and a harp bass line. I played piano on several different versions of his 'Cavatina', which I remember him writing - the girl in the next studio in Redcliffe Road said to me 'he keeps playing this same tune over and over again it's driving me insane!'. First was on 'The Walking Stick' with David Hemmings, then on 'The Raging Moon' with Brian Forbes before finally on 'Deer Hunter' , which I didn't play on - we were both in Hollywood at that time but working in different studios. John Williams played on all three. I loved 'Michael Kohlhaas' which I went to see with him, and I loved playing on 'Age of Consent' for Michael Powell. I played solo piano at Olympic and James Mason sat next to me, saying he wished he could play the piano! At the start Stanley, Carl and I used to all work on each other's projects. My original prize-winning commercial 'Courage Light Brigade' was played on 2 harpsichords and piano played by the 3 of us! However it was thought to be a bit crazy for an ad and I rescored it for orchestra. Of course I met Hans Zimmer who looked after Stanley and Richard Harvey's 'Snake Ranch'. After Deer Hunter, Stanley really got too busy and tried to do too much. Like so many others he desperately wanted to be recognised as a classical composer and spent much time on his Saxophone Concerto. My last memory was having dinner (...) in the summer of 1993 when I looked through his completed score of the Concerto (I had advised him on various phrasings and dynamics etc). (...) He looked fine (...) but died later that year of leukaemia. I wrote an obituary and at his memorial where I was honoured to conduct the concerto. He is greatly missed.

Alfriston Summer Music

SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL MusicWeb International's Worldwide Concert and Opera Reviews * OPERA REVIEWS * UK CONCERTS * INTERNATIONAL CONCERTS * NEWS ARTICLES * INTERVIEWS * HOME Clicking Google advertisements helps keep MusicWeb subscription-free. Other Links * Archived Reviews 1999 - 2007 * MusicWeb's Disc Review Pages * The MusicWeb Readers Forum * About Seen and Heard Contributors List Contact Us Editorial Board * Editor - Bill Kenny * Deputy Editor - Bob Briggs Founder - Len Mullenger Google Site Search Internet MusicWeb SEEN AND HEARD UK CONCERT REVIEW Howard Blake and Haydn: Howard Blake, Jeremy Young (pianos), Sam Walton (marimba), Edinburgh Quartet (Tristan Gurney, Philip Burrin (violins), Michael Beeston (viola), Mark Bailey (cello), St Andrew’s Church, Alfriston, Sussex, 29.7.2009 (BBr) Haydn: String Quartet in G, op.64/4 (1790) Howard Blake: Spieltrieb, String Quartet in one movement, op.594 (2008) (world première) Violin Sonata, op.586 (1973/2007) (first public performance) Haydn: String Quartet in D, The Lark, op.64/4 (1790) Howard Blake: Diversions for marimba and piano, op.439a (1985) Thank goodness for Howard Blake! This is, without doubt, what the very attentive and appreciative audience at tonight’s show was thinking as they listened to some of the most attractive and satisfying music written in the last 25 years. Alfriston Summer Music is now in its fourth year and this show was part of a week’s music making which takes place in the beautiful 14th century church in this idyllic English country village; each year Jeremy Young and Daniel Bhattacharya present chamber music in the most delightful surroundings you could imagine. The church is ideal for performance for it isn’t too reverberant – it’s a small building (only 115 feet by 70!) – and there is a real feeling of intimacy which chamber music craves. I wish I could have stayed and heard more. Tonight’s concert was given in honour of Blake’s 70th birthday and it was a happy choice to pair his work with that of Haydn, surely one of the wittiest composers who ever put pen to paper. The Edinburgh Quartet gave two Haydn Quartets with exactly the right spirit, pointing all the humour – and there is much humour in these works – and delighting us with their delicate touch in this music. Most enjoyable was Mark Bailey’s relishing of Haydn’s fantastic cello writing, but theirs was a true ensemble performance, all four members of the quartet working together in superb accord. Blake’s new quartet Spieltrieb, commissioned by the Edinburgh Quartet to celebrate its 50th anniversary, was given a magnificent performance. It’s not often that one hears a première of such assurance and commitment. Spieltrieb is a concise work, playing for about 16 minutes, but within that short timespan there is much event – including a superb pizzicato scherzo of great virtuosity and, best of all, a coda to melt even the hardest of hearts, ending in the purest D major. This is a major addition to the quartet repertoire and it is to be hoped that it will be taken up by many groups in the near future. The Violin Sonata is a big, bold work; the outer movements are predominantly fast, but within their framework there is a multitude of emotions and moods. The slow, middle, movement begins and ends as a valse triste which encloses a passionate outburst. Tristan Gurney gave a very assured performance in which he was partnered by the composer. The Diversions for marimba and piano, an arrangement of a work for cello and orchestra, ended the concert in very high spirits, the audience being both fascinated by an instrument which seldom finds itself in the spotlight and by a work of great wit and vitality. Sam Walton is a soloist of outstanding virtuosity and Jeremy Young played the piano part with great aplomb. It says much for the quality of both the music and the music making that at the end of the concert many members of the audience wanted to stay and chat with the performers about what they had heard. If this is what Alfriston Summer Music is all about then I hope to return and experience it again. Bob Briggs Back to Top Cumulative Index Page * OPERA REVIEWS * UK CONCERTS * INTERNATIONAL CONCERTS * NEWS ARTICLES * INTERVIEWS * HOME

THE PASSION OF MARY

THERE was no such problem for Robert William Blake, ten-year-old son of the composer Howard Blake. With Bernard Cribbins, nearly 80, and a polished Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, he was the star of a 70th-birthday tribute to Blake Sr at the Cadogan Hall, near Sloane Square, in London. You could hear every word sung by Master Blake (a member of the Stockholm Boys’ Choir), both when he was amplified and when he wasn’t. I have never heard The Snowman live, and had not realised how, with its wit, sensitivity, and subtle design, it is a masterpiece when viewed as a whole. We were eager to hear the London première, also conducted by the composer, of Blake’s 50-minute oratorio The Passion of Mary, which draws together his previous Stabat Mater, the Magnificat, the Salve Regina, and other Marian and nativity texts with the wisdom of a Berlioz. The outcome is a splendid, highly accessible choral work of Three Choirs dimensions. Patricia Rosario — here especially striking — and Martyn Hill were the soprano and tenor soloists. Howard Blake is a master-musician from whom our church and cathedral organists should commission anthems and canticle settings; for he has inspiration on his side.

DAILY MAIL 'HOW THE SNOWMAN SAVED MY LIFE'

Howard Blake loves to tell the story of the time he caught a taxi to the airport. His composition, Walking In The Air, from the animated TV film The Snowman, which was sung by Aled Jones, was topping the Christmas charts. Howard chortles as he recalls, 'The radio in the taxi was playing The Snowman, and I asked the driver to turn it down. He said, " Listen mate, this is the best tune you'll ever hear. You should sit back and listen. You might learn about good music." 'So I sat back and said rather smugly. "Well, actually, I wrote this song. The driver turned around and said, "Oh, yeah? And I'm Father Christmas."' Howard Blake came up with the score for Walking In The Air on a secluded beach in Cornwall, not long after a near-breakdown Howard Blake came up with the score for Walking In The Air on a secluded beach in Cornwall, not long after a near-breakdown With that, Howard throws back his head and roars with laughter. With his boyish face and twinkling eyes, he is not what one might expect from an eminent composer who has just turned 70. In fact, his birthday was marked by a special concert and topping the bill - with an angelic rendition of Walking In The Air - was Howard's ten-year-old son, Robert. The enchanting story of a boy and his snowman who comes alive, is now a firmly established Christmas classic. A 26-minute animated film, first shown on Channel 4 on Christmas Eve 1982, it has become the staple diet of TV repeats every December. While the story is heartwarming in itself, it is Howard's haunting score, and, in particular, the music and lyrics of the theme song Walking In The air, which give the film such hope and joy. Incredibly, the song was first composed when Howard was in the depths of despair. Born to working class parents in Brighton, by the time Howard was six he had taught himself to read and play music and, at 18, he won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music. After scraping a living as a session musician, his break came in 1968 when he was asked to compose incidental music for some of the Tara King episodes of the hugely successful cult TV series The Avengers. 'Everyone wanted me to write for The Avengers, and after that I was offered other TV shows, films and commercials, and my income suddenly leapt. I took it all on and, in the middle of it all, I got married. My wife, Mavis, didn't want to live in a pokey little flat, so we bought a lease on a house in Knightsbridge, next to Harrods. 'It was grand, imposing, impressive - and I hated it. I would find myself walking around this huge house, feeling totally displaced, and I couldn't compose a note. It was a kind of breakdown. I thought, "I can't keep going like this". It was total burnout, and I'd had enough - to the point that I didn't even care if I lived or died anymore. 'I knew I had to get away. It would mean career suicide, but I just didn't care. I said to my wife, "I've got to work out what I'm going to do, and I need to find somewhere totally silent." I packed the car, and left her on the doorstep, asking, "What do I tell people?" Howard Blake with his son Robert, who sang the classic song at a concert to mark his father's 70th birthday Howard Blake with his son Robert, who sang the classic song at a concert to mark his father's 70th birthday 'I didn't have a clue where I was going, but I finally ended up in a tiny fishing village in Cornwall. The beach, was deserted because it was late February, and next to it was an empty holiday camp. In the corner was a small wooden chalet, all on it's own, and I thought, "That's where I need to be." 'The only heating was a single electric bar heater, but, walking into this freezing hut, in total isolation, was the first time I felt calm in months. I started reading, took up yoga and finally began to write music again. 'One day, as I walked along the deserted beach, six notes just came to my head. I jotted them down on a scrap of paper - which I still own. This was the beginning of the tune of Walking In The Air.' Those few notes and the dog-eared scrap of paper stayed with Howard for 11 years, as he returned to London and rebuilt his life and career. His marriage collapsed - but he was composing the orchestral, choral and ballet scores he'd always dreamed of. 'But those few notes of my un-named melody kept coming back to haunt me,' he says. 'I couldn't get them out of my head - I needed to find a home for the song.' Then, by chance, in 1982, Howard met film producer John Coates, who was working on a new animated film. This was The Snowman - based on the children's picture book by Raymond Briggs - but he needed a score to accompany it. Howard says, 'I knew this was where my song should go.' It was only when the music was finished, that Howard decided to write lyrics to his lead melody. 'I got up one morning and thought, "I'll hire a deckchair in the park for the day and write some words. 'I didn't actually have a clue what I was going to write, but, as I stepped from the doorstep onto the pavement, and then from the pavement down onto the road, I suddenly thought about stepping into the air... walking in the air. I thought, "That's great - I've never heard anyone say that phrase." So I paid a fiver for my deckchair, and sat writing for the whole day.' Aled Jones, who recorded Walking In The Air for a TV Commercial after the original singer's voice broke Aled Jones, who recorded Walking In The Air for a TV Commercial after the original singer's voice broke Although many people believe that Aled Jones sang the film's theme song, it was actually recorded by Peter Auty, a 12-year-old choir boy from St Paul's Cathedral. It was only five years later, when a toy company asked to use the tune for a TV commercial, that Howard decided to re-record it. 'I rang Peter, and a deep voice answered the phone,' he says. 'His voice had broken, so he couldn't be my soloist. We didn't know who to choose, but I had seen a boy from Wales sing on the BBC's Songs Of Praise. I found out his name - and that was how The Snowman made Aled's career.' Fifty-six and divorced with two children, Howard, now established as one of Britain's most successful composers, was to find his life changed unexpectedly. 'To be honest, I was totally fulfilled,' he says. 'I never expected I would ever fall in love again. 'It happened by chance. I went to have my picture taken for the cover of my CD, and the photographer had two Swedish friends staying. One was Diane, who was just 23. We got on so well, and I fell in love with her very quickly. She is my soulmate.' When Robert came along, Howard was terrified of being an older father - but, he needn't have worried. 'I didn't have much to do with my older children after my divorce, so it's been wonderful to grow so close to Robert. I dance around the room to music with him. It was only when he was six that I heard him singing in the bath and realised he had a beautiful voice.' In fact, Robert won a place with the world-renowned Stockholm Cathedral Boys Choir, and has performed several times on national television. When a concert was planned to celebrate Howard's 70th birthday, Robert was chosen as the soloist. 'I can't imagine a better way to celebrate my birthday than seeing my own boy on stage, singing my song,' he says. 'Yes, it did bring tears to my eyes. The whole evening was magical. And it snowed that night - for the first time in 70 years in London in October.' Diane and Robert live in Stockholm, and Howard sees them every few weeks. 'We live apart,' he says, 'because Diane has her own career as a corporate lawyer, but we are such a close family unit. 'I can't wait for them to come to London for Christmas. Last year, we all went to midnight mass and the Bishop of Kensington started his sermon by saying, "There is more to Christmas than Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer and The Snowman".' With that, Howard starts to chuckle again - a musical genius who likes nothin

TIME OUT Christmas 2008

What was it about 1982, its fantastical mute characters and heartwarming flights with children? This animation of Raymond Briggs'story has the edge over 'ET' thanks to (Howard Blake's)'Walking in the air', the horrors of Aled Jones' subsequent career notwithstanding

NAXOS: music for piano and strings

Howard BLAKE (b 1938) Violin Sonata, op.586 (1973 – 2007) [23:41] Penillion, op.571 (1975/2005) [9:32] Piano Quartet, op.179 (1974) [27:14] Jazz Dances, op.520a (1976/2008) [13:48] Madeleine Mitchell (violin), Jack Rothstein (violin), Kenneth Essex (viola), Peter Willison (cello), Howard Blake (piano) rec. 9 October 1974, Conway Hall, London (Quartet), 24 and 25 May 2008 (Sonata), 13 July 2008 (Penillion) and 14 July 2008 (Jazz Dances), Potton Hall, Westleton, Suffolk DDD NAXOS 8.572083 [74:15] Released to coincide with his 70th birthday, this disk of, mainly, “recent” chamber works by Howard Blake is a welcome reminder that there is so much more to this interesting composer than Walking in the Air and a myriad of film and TV scores. Whilst a student Blake formed a violin and piano duo with the late Miles Baster – it was after a recital they gave in Edinburgh, which ended with the Franck Sonata, that Baster was asked to form the Edinburgh Quartet (for whom Blake has recently completed a String Quartet for their 50th anniversary) – and they worked their way through the whole of the repertoire for their instruments. The Violin Sonata was written at the behest of Baster but as he left for Scotland and the new Quartet the work was abandoned with only a few sketches made. A decade later Jack Rothstein asked for a Sonata and the first version of the present work was written. But what we have here is a “ferociously” (Blake’s word) revised version, dedicated to the memory of Baster. Starting in a most unprepossessing way the music soon moves into typical Blakeian rhythmic and melodic mode, and the movement progresses in a dance–like manner, with short lyrical episodes breaking up the forward movement. Although this music doesn’t sound at all like Douglas Lilburn’s magnificent Violin Sonata (1950) it reminded me of that work because of its sheer determination of purpose. The slow movement which follows is distant and withdrawn, the music moving simply in a melodic line for the violin accompanied by a single line in the right hand of the piano and held chords in the left. An agitated and passionate middle section, with wide leaps for the fiddle, disturbs the calm but the opening section returns, a little more resigned and melancholic. The finale is a laconic and gently humorous piece, after a whirlwind start, which jumps from idea to idea without resting. This Violin Sonata is a very fine achievement and a worthy addition to the repertoire. Penillion was originally written for violin and harp and exists in several different version – one for flute and harp is available on a disk of Blake’s chamber music, MERIDIAN CDE84553. It’s in eight very short sections mixing lively and restrained music. As befits a penillion – a Welsh composition where an harpist accompanies him/herself whilst singing – these are songs without words, but the harmonies are far more modern than anything you’d hear in a real penillion. It’s an unpretentious, delicate piece. That the Piano Quartet should be included here is of special significance for it was with this work that Blake made the conscious decision to cut back on his more commercial, and lucrative (!) film work and turn to the concert hall. Indeed so much is it a pivotal work in his catalogue that he turned down the opportunity to score Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon in favour of writing this work. The work was written for the performers playing here, who gave the première, in the Purcell Room, eight months after this recording was made. It’s a very classical work in the mould of Dvořák’s chamber works (a comment which shocked Blake when I mentioned it to him, for he had thought it to be rooted slightly earlier). No matter. It’s a fine work, strong themes, a well thought out design, very gratefully written for the instruments – Blake fully understand strings (he says he once played the fiddle badly). The scherzo, second, movement has a Mendelssohnian lightness and freshness about it, but the harmony belies anything pre–1940! The slow movement may come as a shock to anyone who knows Blake’s wonderful Piano Concerto (re–issued this month SONY 88697376972) for this is the Concerto’s slow movement in embryo. It’s very touching in this form, the emotion more restrained, the gestures smaller but no less moving. The finale is a country dance. The Jazz Dances make a delightful collection of encore pieces, but they’re not jazz per se, rather jazzy pieces – in the way that the Blues in Ravel’s Violin Sonata is jazzy. It’s hard to believe that these pieces, which fit perfectly on to the combination of violin and piano, were originally written for two pianos! They are by turns fast and slow, one a blues, one a boogie, one a kind of popular song and so on. Like the Five Pieces, op.84 (1964) by his friend Malcolm Arnold any one of these miniatures would make very good encore pieces for they are most enjoyable and great fun. This is a very enjoyable and exciting disk, not least for the superb Violin Sonata. Madelaine Mitchell is a committed advocate for this music and it is to be hoped that the Sonata, at the very least, will enter her regular repertoire. The composer himself is a sympathetic duo partner, and the sessions brought back, for him, the memories of his partnership with Baster and the joy and satisfaction of playing chamber music together. Despite the fact that the recording of the Quartet dates from 34 years before the recordings of the other works, the sound is remarkably consistent and has a lovely, rich, ambiance and in the duo works there is a real feel of the concert room. The musicians are placed a little way from the microphone so as to put them in perspective with the acoustic. Now Naxos has dipped its toe into the Blake catalogue might I make a plea for a disk of his music for string quartet? The public deserves to hear more of this endlessly fascinating and very interesting composer. Bob Briggs

A Bob Briggs appreciation of the Piano Concerto on International Music Web

Let it snow

By Alex Browne - Peace Arch News Published: November 08, 2008 10:00 AM When British author/illustrator Raymond Briggs’ classic 1982 children’s book, The Snowman, was turned into an equally classic (and Oscar-nominated) animated film by director Dianne Jackson, one of the lasting benefits was the creation of a musical score by English composer Howard Blake. It included the song Walking In The Air, sung by a boy soprano, which became an international hit. But much like the magical snowman of the story, built by a lonely boy named James who discovers to his amazement that he has created a friend and partner in adventure, Blake’s entire score for the movie has taken on a life of its own. Today, it is frequently performed at events in which it is played by a live orchestra accompanying the film. And there’s also a concert version with full narration taking the place – Peter and the Wolf-like – of the visual imagery. But in both cases, the challenges of performing and interpreting the piece are usually in the hands of professional musicians. Not so in the upcoming sold-out performance of The Snowman by the Semiahmoo Strings Youth Orchestra (Sunday, Nov. 30, 2:30 p.m. at the Wheelhouse Theatre, Earl Marriott Secondary, 15751 16 Ave.). With the exception of percussionist Phillip Crewe and guest singer Aiden Wilk, the brilliantly tender and evocative music is in the hands of the student musicians – under the direction of Strings founder Carla Birston. It’s yet another of the challenges – including supporting professional baritone Alex Dobson, and playing with some of Vancouver’s finest jazz musicians – that mark the Semiahmoo Strings (and its junior subgroups) as an ensemble in a realm of its own among youth orchestras. As usual, Carla is being assisted in preparing and rehearsing the ensemble by her husband, cellist and arranger Harold Birston, and is also receiving welcome help from violinist Gillian Gjernes, mother of Strings cellist Roland. There is a cinema theme to all of the concert, which, beyond the accompanied screening of the 26-minute film, offers classical pieces that have acquired new life by being featured in soundtracks, as well as music specifically created for motion pictures. Thus John Williams’ famous Raiders Of The Lost Ark theme, performed by the Demi-Semiahmoo Strings, and a suite of film themes by Italian film composer Ennio Morricone (The Untouchables, Once Upon A Time In The West, The Good The Bad and the Ugly, Maddalena) are joined by Bach’s Toccata and Fugue (given bravura treatment by conductor Leopold Stokowski and Disney artists’ visuals in the groundbreaking 1940 Fantasia), and two pieces latterly associated with 2001 A Space Odyssey, Richard Strauss’ fanfare from Also Sprach Zarathustra and Johann Strauss’ By The Beautiful Blue Danube (used memorably for a sequence of a rocket docking at a space station). But while these are the kind of idiomatic stretches the Strings’ members have taken in stride before, actually playing to film is new territory for the talented students. It’s also providing a workout for Carla, whose conducting of tempos and cues will be critical in matching the music to the movie – the students eyes must stay on her, rather than wandering to the projected images. “I’ve watched it about 50 times over the last month,” she said. “Twice a night, including one time through conducting without the sound.” A surprise for her was the free-flowing nature of the score as opposed to movie music that mirrors every aspect of the action. “I would have thought the music would have been more in synch with the images – but it’s not at all,” she said, noting some actions begin on second and third beats of measures, while even a dance sequence in which a snowman appears to be conducting the music is not in strict tempo. “You look for every little thing as a cue. Harold said, ‘You’re going to have the best sense of time after this’.” “I don’t know how this would work with one of those ubiquitous click tracks they use now,” Harold Birston said. “The publishers offered to attempt to make a click track for us, but I’m sure it will work fine without it.” It helps that the young musicians really love the music, Carla said. In fact, excitement about the project ran so high among the students after the first rehearsal that she was beseiged with demands for tickets – which led to an early sell-out for the concert. “They were buying tickets for their friends as well as their families,” she noted. “I think we could have sold it out three times over.” Noting the response, the Birstons are not ruling out a repeat of the film music idea – possibly as a special concert every year. They agree that film music has become the most vital survivals of the classical tradition in the present day – and it’s dramatic sense is a guarantee of audience attention. “I like the license film composers have,” Harold said. “I like that about opera too – it’s not like the strict sonata form. But some film music is beautifully scored, and beautifully played by first class musicians. Challenging or not, the exercise of The Snowman will be worthwhile for the sense of accomplishment among the Semiahmoo Strings musicians – and their director. “I said to Harold, ‘As soon as I see that snowman’s face on the big screen I’m going to be very excited’,” Carla said.

Birthday concert

Walking in the snow. Composer Howard Blake's celebratory 70th birthday concert at Cadogan Hall, where he conducted the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, included one especially personal performance. For singing the solo of his hit Walking In The Air from The Snowman was his ten-year-old chorister son Robert - performed, coincidentally, just as the first October snow in London fell for 70 years. 'It went down tremendously well,' a proud Blake tells me. 'Robert has grown up with music and he loves it. He's taking after me, I think.' A 600-strong audience enjoyed the concert, which also featured the brilliant Shanghai-based pianist William Chen and the London premiere of Blake's dramatic oratorio The Passion Of Mary. 'I thought I've got this huge birthday and I'm so old nothing will happen, so I sat down and thought what I would really like to happen on my birthday and this was it,' adds Blake, who after the performance headed to the Groucho Club, where a piano was installed in his private party room especially for the occasion.

Classic FM Radio Arts Daily podcast

This week sees a special concert celebrating the life and works of Howard Blake. The composer himself - who's just turned 70 - will conduct the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in several works including his Piano Concerto. Chinese pianist William Chen has made study of Blake's music, and will perform on the night. He explains his fascination.

A Birthday Celebration

CFM Mag Oct 08 HB.pdf

An Interview with Howard Blake

Howard Blake at 70

MO Sep08 news story.pdf MO Sep08 HB p1.pdf MO Sep08 HB p2.pdf

The Showman

GIG Sep 08.pdf

Too Many Records (Interview)

IRR Too Many Records Oct 08 HB.pdf

Blake's 70

Classical Music_barline news.pdf

News story on Howard's 70th birthday concert

Pianist Mag Oct08.pdf