Search - John [British Composer] Ireland, John Lenehan :: Ireland: Piano Works, Vol. 1

Balsamic Ireland smooths away the cares

K. Farrington | Missegre, France | 03/20/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"There are only three composers (Bax, Ireland and Bridge) who manage to reach behind my normal level of intellectual music appreciation and tap into that fog which precedes my conscious memories. In this primordial soup lies the true me, warts and all, which I manage to hide from even myself. When I play Ireland's piano pieces, from time to time a phrase might evince an emotion or a feeling which defies verbal explanation as set out by Immanuel Kant in his Third Critique. This free play is quite powerful as 'In those days' and 'Sarnia'. I feel a secret part of my soul has been touched but when I try to ascertain where or how, it is gone. Ireland's bright smiling harmonies are tinged with nostalgia and the sense of loss beyond recall. This loss is indefinable which makes it all the more poignant, is it youth, innocence, joy? We cannot be sure but we are certain of the chagrin in its wake, yet this music is never sad per se. It is like storm clouds in the sky on a beautiful summer's day. In 'Sarnia' Ireland takes us over to his Channel Island home and we can see he was happy in nature, as he was in his 'London Pieces' in that gentler London he lived in the early days of the 20th century. Certainly few Londoners today will recognise these pastels that Ireland wanted to place with his orchestral London Overture as a set of impressions. The Prelude and Ballade are more formally structured works which show that Ireland could also set out serious works without his usual source of visual or biographical programmatic elements. He is always melodic and heart-easing in his concept and we can be sure his finished product has the polish of Ravel. Ireland had been called the 'English Faure' because of his delicacy of expression and the fastidiousness of his forms. Every note and every phrase is essential to his composition, nothing is de trop. He is to my mind the most 'English' in his understated power of emotion with his love of nature, urban as well as rural."