Sonata for violin and piano - violin part, op.586

Miles Baster and Howard Blake were fellow-students at the Royal Academy of Music (1957-60) and formed a duo, performing concerts of the standard violin and piano repertoire. Miles left London to live in Edinburgh in 1960 and lead The Edinburgh String Quartet. He was violin professor at Glasgow Academy and Leith University and was devoted solely to music until his death at the age of 68 in 2005. He had largely abandoned an earlier ambition to be a soloist in favour of professional activity within chamber and orchestral music but had once expressed the wish that Howard would compose a sonata for him. Howard did sketch the original version of this work in 1973 but was dissatisfied and withdrew it from circulation. A conversation in the Usher Hall in 2007 with the present cellist in the Edinburgh quartet prompted Howard to look again at the sonata which he then completed in memory of Miles.