Well my first listen to the violin concerto was very enjoyable, another lovely work to get to know. My only obvious comment on the production is that the dynamics are rather wide and it's rather quiet a lot of the time with a few loud outbursts. I'm not one for lots of compression (as someone once said, Classic FM in the UK use so much compression that Haydn's Surprise Symphony no longer has a surprise in it) but the Blake violin concerto is perhaps a bit too much the other way! Still, a most enjoyable work, well performed.
A bit of Blake trivia - did you know that he was Ridley Scott's first choice to score ALIEN, the two of them having got on so well during the making of THE DUELLISTS?
Apparently Scott pushed and pushed and pushed for Blake to score it, but Fox refused to go with a no-name composer and "forced" him to use an estalished name in Jerry Goldsmith. Blake even wrote demos, but they still wouldn't have it. As great as Goldsmith's score was, it does make you wonder "what if" Blake had scored it, and where his career might have gone as a result.
It also might explain a little bit about why Scott tinkered around with Goldsmith's score so much, having to work with a composer he didn't especially want to.
Love Blake's work, especially THE SNOWMAN and RIDDLE OF THE SANDS.
