Howard Blake is a British composer who was born in London in 1938. He is most famous for writing the soundtrack for the animated film The Snowman which was produced by Channel 4 in the UK, and released in 1982.

The film, which has become a Christmas classic, was based on Raymond Briggs’s children’s picture book of the same name, published in 1978.

The showpiece sequence of the film is a spectacular flying scene in which the main characters fly to the North Pole, accompanied by the song Walking in the Air, a very moving piece which features prominent boy soprano vocals.

Many people mistakenly believe that Welsh soprano Aled Jones sang the song in the film, but it was actually another singer, Peter Auty. Aled Jones did however sing on a version of the song that was released separately.

While the version in the film with soprano vocals is the most well known version of Walking in the Air, Howard Blake arranged a special version of the piece for solo piano specifically for his longtime friend Vladimir Ashkenazy (Владимир Ашкенази), an Icelandic pianist, who was originally born in Russia in 1937. You can listen to this solo piano version below.

The recording is the title track of Ashkenazy,’s 2014 album Walking In The Air: The Music of Howard Blake (released under the Decca label) which was one of Classic FM’s albums of the weekend in April 2014.

Ashkenazy plays the piece effortlessly and makes it sound easy to play, but it’s deceptively hard, and more difficult than it sounds.

The sheet music for this version is available to download directly from Highbridge Music, a music publisher that exclusively publishes works by Blake.

In addition to being included on Ashkenazy’s album, Walking in the Air is the c-sharp minor piece from Blake’s Lifecycle, which is a collection of 24 pieces for solo piano, containing one piece for each of the 12 major and 12 minor keys.