Richard BLACKFORD (b. 1954)
Blewbury Air (2019) [12:07]
Raphael Wallfisch (cello), Adrian Farmer (piano)
Rec. 5 June 2020, Wyastone Concert Hall, Monmouth, UK
NIMBUS RECORDS NI1570 [12:07]
Nimbus seems to be quite keen on its CD EPs at the moment, but this one is very brief indeed. Richard Blackford’s Blewbury Air is “a love song to the village of Blewbury, Oxfordshire, where I have lived for many years.”
The piece has three movements with descriptive titles. By The Water’s Edge is by no means a calm coarse fisherman’s idyll, having as it does “a sense of rippling tonality and non-functional, shifting harmony” in the piano’s lively arpeggios. Structurally, the movement takes the form of a rondo in which three themes recur with “transformations and developments” each time. Tranquility is reached in the second movement, Incantation With Bells. This has something of Debussy’s La Cathédrale engloutie about it, with a wealth of open-fifth intervals in the piano over which the cello plays wistful, pentatonic themes rising to a powerful climax. The Wind In The Branches closes the work, characterised by lively swirling whole-tone patterns in the piano with the cello in relatively lyrical counterpoint.
Richard Blackford’s distinguished career includes recordings in Nimbus of a Violin Concerto (review), his vocal/orchestral work Not in our time (review), and The Great Animal Orchestra Symphony (review). Fans will be happy to add this not insubstantial piece of chamber music to their collections, though in CD form it might have been nice to have a couple of extra treats to go along with Blewbury Air as the ‘main act’. I do however know how long it takes to record any one work properly, so this is just an observation rather than a criticism. This is well-crafted and accessible music, and of course is superbly performed and recorded. Do not however expect to be gifted an ‘Air’ that you can take away and hum.
Dominy Clements
Previous review: John Quinn
