Violin Concerto 'Requiem to the Memory of A Most True and Saintly Soul'
Available on ASV digital CD record label DCA 905 (1994) stereo.
First Performance: English Northern Philharmonia / Christiane Edinger / Paul Daniel, Town Hall, Leeds, 6 February 1993.
Composer’s note: In April 1991 I composed and recorded a ‘cantata’ overnight as a challenge for the BBC TV programme ‘Challenge Anneka’. It was done for a good cause, to help promote ‘The Paralympics’ and a large crowd of participants and fundraisers joined us at ITV in London to watch the first broadcast of it at 11.15pm that night April 17th. I found myself talking to Bernard Atha who ran the Arts in Leeds. He was amazed by it and wondered, since I could write a cantata overnight, whether I could compose a full-scale violin concerto for Nigel Kennedy in time for the centenary of Leeds in early 1993. I said that I had always longed to write such a work and would be delighted. Arrangements began but although I knew Nigel I couldn’t get any response from either him or his agent at that time. Years later his manager wrote and said that when he moved offices he found my letter behind the radiator! That September I was visiting a music festival in a castle near Steyr in Austria and heard some terrific violin practise coming from the next room. I was so excited by the sound that I sat down and sketched out the opening theme of the concerto, taking it to the terrace where the violinist Christiana Edinger was having coffee. She said ‘Let’s try it’ and our host Ilona von Ronay suggested that we go to Bruckner’s house in the village where there was a good piano. On playing it Christiane declared she would love to give the premiere. I began work and finished the orchestration the following July. Christiane then began rehearsing it, giving the first performance in February 1993.
My inner, personal motivation for composing the concerto was quite different. My mother, who had played and taught me the violin, had died on 23rd September 1990 to my most heartfelt grief. On the title page of the published concerto is placed a dedication ‘To the memory of a most true and saintly soul’, which refers to my dear mother. The entire concerto is therefore, whilst being commissioned by the city of Leeds dedicated to my mother. The slow movement Adagio calma may be regarded as a requiem for her. The concerto might in fact be more aptly named: ‘Concerto da Requiem’. Top review from United Kingdom ‘Ballerina’: Ballerina: Howard Blake Violin Concerto, available on ASV. ‘One of the most moving works of its kind in the last 100 years.’
Movements
- 1:
- Allegro Assai 19min 54sec
- 2:
- Adagio 7min 9sec
- 3:
- Allegro Con Brio 5min 33sec
Recordings
