Lifecycle
Lifecycle
A sequence of 24 pieces for the piano - the complete 77 page album can be purchased by mail order
First Performance: Nadia Giliova, St James’ Piccadilly, lunchtime recital, 8 August 2007.
‘Lifecycle is a brilliantly conceived piano cycle of ‘imagination and reflection’, combining teaching pieces (the Chaconne and Toccatina are from the Associated Board’s Diploma syllabus) with recital works ranging from the uncompromising technical demands of Scherzo and Oberon, to the outstandingly sublime yet musically powerful Prelude and Nocturne.
Lifecycle covers the composer’s creative life with an extraordinary number of musical connections running through the set, namely the melodic importance of the interval of a third – most often major and rising, the second being the harmony of a bare fifth, again often rising, but equally heard as a chord.
Blake conceived the idea for Lifecycle, a sequence of 24 pieces for the piano, after a conversation with world-renowned pianist Vladimir Ashkenazy in 1962 and dedicates the cycle to this wonderful musician. Although 24 works in the set, it is not a set of Preludes as written by Chopin, Scriabin and Rachmaninov, but there does appear within the cycle one piece in each of the 12 major and 12 minor chromatic keys.’
(from sleeve-note by R. Matthew Walker)
(Incorporates the early ’12 Piano Pieces’ and includes eight pieces from among them which were titled “Eight Character Pieces” when first published by Faber Music Ltd in 1985.)
Movements
- 1:
- Prelude: Andantino 1min 52sec
- 2:
- Nocturne 3min 24sec
- 3:
- Impromptu 6min 34sec
- 4:
- Toccatina 1min 33sec
- 5:
- Mazurka 2min 7sec
- 6:
- Walking Song 1min 58sec
- 7:
- Chaconne 4min 48sec
- 8:
- Scherzo 3min 7sec
- 9:
- Ballad 2min
- 10:
- Rag 1min 36sec
- 11:
- Study 3min 4sec
- 12:
- Berceuse 1min 7sec
- 13:
- Prelude: Allegro Risoluto 1min 7sec
- 14:
- The Music Box 3min 13sec
- 15:
- Romanza 1min 7sec
- 16:
- Dance of the Hunters 3min 15sec
- 17:
- Dance of the Sun and the Moon 2min 40sec
- 18:
- Isabelle 1min 33sec
- 19:
- Serioso . Come Una Marcia Lenta 2min 53sec
- 20:
- Jump 49sec
- 21:
- Walking in the Air 2min 48sec
- 22:
- Night and Day 2min 56sec
- 23:
- Oberon 3min 46sec
- 24:
- Make-Believe 1min 31sec
Recordings
