Howard Blake (b.1938)
Symphony No 1 ‘Impressions of a City‘, Op 42/409 (1967 rev.1990)
Concert Dances for piano and orchestra, Op 432 (1992)
The Court of Love, Op 286 (1979)
A Month in the Country, Op 446 (1992)
Philharmonia Orchestra/Howard Blake (piano, conductor)
English Northern Philharmonia/Paul Daniel (A Month in the Country)
rec. 1991, Henry Wood Hall, London and 1993, Leeds Town Hall (A Month in the Country)
Somm Recordings CD0678 [61]
Howard Blake is now 85 and these recordings date from the early 1990s. It’s a mixed programme – a compact symphony, dances for piano and orchestra, a ballet score and music for a film. This last, A Month in the Country, is ex-ASV CD DCA905 where it was coupled with Blake’s Violin Concerto. As for the Symphony, Concert Dances and The Court of Love, these were recorded in Henry Wood Hall in London in 1991. I have to admit I’ve not researched exhaustively, but I can’t find a prior release though doubtless Blakeans will write in to tell me otherwise. Somm’s track listing isn’t the easiest to decipher and its recording information, with dates, has obviously been undone by the number of tracks. There’s also no reference that I can find in the booklet to the previous ASV release.
The first recording of the Symphony, when it was called Movement for Orchestra, was made by the RTV Slovenia Symphony Orchestra under Samo Hubad in 1975 and released on LP. It’s since been reissued on Heritage HTGCD165 with other British works at which point it was apparently called Symphony No 1: Movement for Orchestra “Impressions of a City”, Op 42. In this Somm release the subtitle ‘Movement for Orchestra’ has been removed and the opus number Op.42/409 reflects the revision of 1990. The new version has slightly extended orchestration and is expanded a little, by about two minutes, so the symphony now lasts 14 and a half minutes. If Blake hadn’t told us it was ‘Impressions of a City’ one wouldn’t necessarily know, but it is, in any case, a convenient impressionistic tool. The city wakes in the opening bars, not unlike VW’s London Symphony, but Blake’s vision is notably more compressed and hurried, moving into a slinkily athletic, brassy passage, allowing liquid winds their moment as the music slows, and then grows in ardour. Faster athletic sections conform to a very tight compressed symphonic structure – a sort of Largo – Allegro – Andante – and we get a pizzicato passage, and some vivid jazzy material, before a return to the gauzy opening music, final paragraphs that do allow a final moment of jollity. Symphonically tight and compressed as it is, if you like Holst’s Hammersmith or Delius’s Paris or the VW, you will enjoy Blake’s unfashionably unbuttoned symphonic take. Alternatively, you can enjoy it under its original title, of course, Movement for Orchestra.
The Concert Dances, with the composer both playing piano and directing the Philharmonia, is a charming, light-hearted effusion, that happens to be an arrangement of his Dances for two pianos of 1974, which has been recorded by Vladimir and Vovka Ashkenazy. It shows how adept Blake is at self-borrowing, recycling and rearranging, part of which – apart from his sheer fecundity and diligent hard work – explains his outrageously high opus numbers. However, bringing the focus onto one pianist allows this work an alternative life. I’m happy to go with his movement descriptions, even if I find the Slow Ragtime more like a Lullaby, his Boogie movement more saucy than anything Albert Ammons-like, and the Jazz-Waltz more in the nature of a luscious film score. Still, I daresay you may feel differently and it doesn’t much matter anyway. If you enjoy crowd-pleasing and ear-titillating tunes, you will always find them with Blake.
The music for The Court of Love was composed in 1979 and is cast in three scenes. The opening panel is called The Enchantress and is a Theme and Variations with a piano in the texture to add rhythmically enriching elements. The orchestration is strong though my copy of the CD has a glitch at 4:10 which is momentarily distracting. Cadences evoke the medieval, but throughout the richness of his romantic orchestration is employed to great effect, as it is in the central movement, The Maiden and the Troubadour, which has a slight Gallic feel. The lovely and stirring theme is repeated, varied and burnished with filmic romance. The Queen is the finale and it’s full of open-hearted attractive themes that ends in a blaze of no little glory.
J. L. Carr’s A Month in the Country was made into a quietly memorable feature film in 1987 starring Colin Firth, Kenneth Branagh, Natasha Richardson and Patrick Malahide. Blake’s music is cast just for strings – he wanted to avoid grandiloquence – lasts around a quarter of an hour and is here presented in five discrete sections. The most irresistible is the lovely opening Larghetto though there’s also a crisp March, and a rather edgy Adagio, which is quite close in spirit to Britten’s Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge. Whereas the final slow panel evokes Delius. Blake’s music is concise, precise, calibrated perfectly. Paul Daniel directs the English National Philharmonia with due sensitivity.
This disc presents Blake the pianist as well as the conductor and of course, and above all, the versatile composer. He sits comfortably in the lineage of British composers unafraid of approachable, tuneful music crafted with style and skill.
Jonathan Woolf
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