PopMarket - Richard Blackford - Blackford: Three Rossetti Songs - Multicolor

Lloyd's first solo piano piece, An African Shrine (1966), was written for the great British pianist, John Ogdon, who premiered it on 30 August 1969 for a BBC Radio 3 broadcast and recorded it a year later for EMI. The material teems with invention of the highest quality, yet the composer keeps a tight rein on his ideas. Weighty, dramatic sequences are counterpoised convincingly with gentler, lyrical episodes inside an expansive, sweeping canvas that honours the depth and seriousness of the music's underlying theme. Above all, the music is unequivocally, and compellingly, pianistic and could not have been written for any other medium.

Nadia Anjuman (1980-2005) was an Afghan poet writing during a period of turmoil. In 1995, when the Taliban captured Herat, her birthplace, women's liberties were drastically reduced. A gifted student, Nadia faced a future with no hope of education. With other women she attended an underground educational circle called the Golden Needle Sewing School. Meeting under the guise of learning how to sew, the meetings were in fact discussions on literature with Herat professors. The project was dangerous if caught, the punishment could be imprisonment, torture or hanging. Nadia was 21 when the Taliban was ousted. While earning her degree in literature she published her first book of poetry. She married into a family who believed that, since she was a woman, writing brought disgrace on their reputation. Yet she continued to write. At the age of 25 she was beaten to death by her husband. The five poems I chose are wide-ranging and cover extremes of emotion from love; to delight in being a poet; to despair at her lack of freedom; and even contemplation of suicide. © Richard Blackford

Lullaby (Intercom Baby) was originally written for violin and piano in the mid-1970s, but Lloyd arranged it for solo piano in 1987 for the present recording. The composer wrote of the work, 'It is really a lullaby, but the mother does not rock the cradle, she is in another room at the end of an intercom listening for her baby; what she hears is not always as peaceful as it should be'. This gentle berceuse has a lilting warmth, with delightfully puckish central excursions. There is an old-world charm to the piece that belies it's modish title.