MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2023
Approaching 60,000 reviews
and more.. and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


 REVIEW

Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

alternatively
CD: Crotchet
Download: Classicsonline


John IRELAND (1879-1962)
Violin Sonata No. 1 in D minor (1909) [30:53]
Violin Sonata No. 2 in A minor (1917) [29:30]
Fantasy Sonata in E flat major (1943) [12:53]
Cello Sonata in G minor (1923) [20:56]
The Holy Boy for cello and piano (1913 arr. 1919) [2:34]
Phantasie Trio in A minor (1907) [11:07]
Trio No. 2 in E major (1917) [13:21]
Trio No. 3 in E major (1938) [25:20]
Lydia Mordkovich (violin); Gervase de Peyer (clarinet); Ian Brown (piano); Karine Georgian (cello)
rec. Rosslyn Hill Chapel, Hampstead, 1982-83 (Fantasy); Faculty of Music Concert Hall, Cambridge, 16-21 December 1993. DDD
CHANDOS 241-40 [73:35 + 73:55]
Experience Classicsonline

You might not immediately think so but to all intents and purposes this is in competition with Lyrita's 3CD set of Ireland’s chamber music on SRCD2271 (see review). The two sets are not identically coupled. The Lyrita is a double width box and 3 CD affair while the Chandos is a single width twofer. The Lyrita has the very early Sextet written under the candid shadow of Stanford. It's not essential Ireland but pleasingly Brahmsian. The Lyrita reflects the layout of the original SRCS LPs in the 1970s and is lavish with CD space. 

The Chandos was first issued in the mid-1990s as a double. It lacks the Sextet but adds the jewel-brief Holy Boy in one of its innumerable transcriptions - in company with the two violin sonatas, the sonatas for cello and for clarinet and the three trios.

The timings are close between Lyrita and Chandos although the trios are all shorter by a couple of minutes on Chandos.

Ireland's English passion is a reserved thing. He lacks the unbuttoned sentiment of an Elgar or a Bax. He is subtle and suggestive rather than overt. The Lyrita recordings identify fully with this aspect where by contrast Mordkovitch and Bown flood the music with greater emotional temperature - a more Latinate approach. This works to grand and sometimes Tchaikovskian effect in the First Violin Sonata; one of the most engaging performances I have ever heard of this work. The Sonata was premiered by the composer with Marjorie Hayward.

The swirling eddies and undertow of the Second Violin Sonata also work well in direct rhetoric and in the touching half-lights of the middle movement. The druidic monumental writing of the finale is well done as is the carefree race to the finishing line. The premiere was given by Sammons and Murdoch in the uniform of the Grenadier Guards.

The earliest recording here - the Fantasy-Sonata - is from what was originally a mixed British clarinet and piano recital. The sound is typical of the company - a real enjoyably rich recreation of the sound of player and instrument - more Decca-close than EMI-spatial. It was written for Frederick Thurston who can be heard playing it on a Symposium CD.

The Cello Sonata is given a completely convincing and very romantically taut reading by Georgian and Bown who is such a strength throughout these performances. Has the slow movement at 4:30 ever been done with such slow brooding passion? The premiere fell to Beatrice Harrison with Evlyn Howard-Jones in April 1924. Ireland's gift for romance falling poignantly away at the end of climaxes can be sampled in the compact Phantasie Trio which also has a ‘dumky’ magical wildness about it (3:27).

Things are more subdued in the Second Trio - another work, alongside the Second Sonata, from close to the murderous apex of the Great War - how long would it continue? It does however end in a blaze of what seems youthfully searing optimism comparable with works of the same era from Herbert Howells.

The big Trio No. 3 is in four movements and is dedicated to Walton. It is based on a withdrawn work we can now hear in some measure in another recording not yet reviewed here - Ireland's Clarinet Trio. It is another dreamily yet active lyrical work written one side of the Second World War. His last chamber piece, the Fantasy Sonata written in 1943 bereft of his beloved Channel Isles dates from two years before the end of the war. The penultimate movement of Trio No. 3 seemed a shade diffuse in this performance - something which I did not feel with the ad hoc trio formed for the Lyrita chamber project.

The Chandos sound reflects a more recent and fully digital product. The Lyrita tapes are analogue from the period 1967-74; the Chandos 1984-93. The Chandos offers the essential chamber Ireland on two tightly packed discs in voluptuous sound and performances and with Mordkovitch's fruity tone as against Yfrah Neaman's silvery filament.

The Chandos is more of an international product with Lewis Foreman's just-so notes in English, French and German. The whole set will presumably enjoy superior worldwide distribution.

Rob Barnett


 


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools




Return to Review Index

Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.