Sleepwalking for Soprano Vocalise, Cello and Piano

First Performance: Soloists from The Concordia Foundation, Wigmore Hall, 11 January 2010.

In May 1999 Warwick and Leamington Festival asked if I would compose a work for soprano and 8 cellos, the instrumental combination memorably used by Villa-Lobos in his Bachianas Brazileiras no.5. I began to think and dream about the sound of the grouping, which itself seemed to conjure up the world of dreams-cellos effortlessly evoking the surreal landscape of the unconscious, through which a woman walks, singing wordlessly with closed eyes, like a painting by Fuseli or Delvaux.

As it begins she lies in a deep untroubled sleep (Tranquillo). Images of childhood (Allegretto) give way to memories of a great occasion -perhaps a marriage? (Maestoso). A crazily-animated helter-skelter of notes suggests laughter and gaiety, yet with fears and dangers (Vivace). There is a memory of tragic , yearning love  (Adagio) but the memory is broken by nightmare images of vengeance and death (Allegro Furioso).  There is a waking moment, then return and sleep (Tranquillo).

John Bradshaw in The Birmingham Post wrote of the first performance: ‘… Sleepwalking describes in its seven continuous movements a world of dreams in which a woman moves from deep sleep (depicted by an eerie, unearthly sound created through the use of harmonics) through a series of episodes, half-forgotten memories and a brief wakefulness, returning at last in a final movement to sleep. The 12-minute work is technically demanding and Blake uses to wonderful effect the dark rich sonority of the ensemble to suggest night and the woman’s hazy dreams…a marvellous and evocative work.’

This new arrangement for Soprano, cello and piano was created in response to a request by Gillian Humphries for a work to feature in a concert of young Concordia Foundation prize-winners at the Wigmore Hall on 11th February 2010, which will be the first performance of the piece in this instrumentation