Press

Violin Concerto

Achingly beautiful.

Em Marshall, Artistic Director English Music Festival, 2008

Voices of Exile

Richard Blackford has written a striking new cantata, setting the words of writers who have suffered exile, prison and torture. A deeply literate and assured composer, (he) senses precisely the response demanded by each poem. And he has the skill to set them with a graphic immediacy which never descends to bathos. In a work such as this, that skill is rare.

Hilary Finch, The Times, 21/11/2001

Exile arouses many emotions – nostalgia for lost homeland, rage at the oppressor that made one flee, longing for freedom, distress at being marooned in an alien culture. They were all evoked in Richard Blackford’s hour-long oratorio, Voices of Exile. It was a seamless, cunningly wrought sequence of poems and songs for soloists, chorus and orchestra, the texts inspired – by recent conflicts in Angola, Turkey,Macedonia, and a dozen other places.

As for Blackford’s music, its utter sincerity was shown in its impeccable craftsmanship. And it had genuinely touching moments, particularly in the dignified choral accompaniment Blackford added to the pre-recorded Macedonian folksong.

Ivan Hewett, The Daily Telegraph 22/04/2005

Premiered three years ago, but newly reworked with full orchestral accompaniment, it’s a sincere, well-calculated work: a kind of extended protest song against the manifold persecutions that turn innocent victims into refugees, and refugees into innocent victims. Blackford draws his texts largely from poems, songs and testaments of exiled writers from many different countries and eras – often heard via tapes of the exiles themselves.
This is an eminently singable, thought-provoking choral work that deserves wide circulation.

Richard Morrison, The Times 22/04/2005

Mirror Of Perfection

The music comes from the heart with integrity and a technical assurance that firms up what might otherwise be benign lyricism into something of stature and beauty. Above all, it was obviously good to sing and play, with enough challenge in the writing to keep it within the capacity and interest of young amateurs. There’s a crying need for this kind of music and not enough composers and consequence around who seem willing or able to meet it.

Michael White, Independent on Sunday, 24/3/1996

Mirror of Perfection is musically taut, well-structured and beautifully scored. The Passacaglia is worth of Britten and the harmonic structures in Canticle of Peace are most ingenious. Above all, Richard Blackford has composed a new work that is direct from the heart and speaks to the inner soul of music.

David Fanshawe, Composer

Clothing his amatory hymn in a radiance in strings, harp and three horns, Blackford went on to set poems showing the Saint as love-obsessed. In movement six, a deftly woven passacaglia ‘amore’ appeared no fewer than forty-eight times. After such excess, a Canticle of Peace formed a suitably restful ending to this carefully written and enjoyable cantata.

Nicholas Williams, The Independent, 14/2/1997

I went away quite stunned and overwhelmed by the beauty of it. It should become a standard piece for choral societys up and down the country.

Dr. David Cohen, The JS Cohen Foundation