John Ireland (1879-1962)

[Luke]

This is completely correct. From the orchestral music the Piano Concerto and Legend are essential to understanding Ireland's very special and unique idiom. From the piano music - perhaps the greatest body of British piano music, comparable to the very finest composer and with interesting relationships to both Debussy and Ravel - I suggest the following pieces are either the pinnacles or important for other reasons:

Decorations - The first of these three pieces, The Island Spell - which was inspired by blessed moments on Jersey - is one of Ireland's most impressionist works and close in spirit and technique to certain watery pieces by Debussy. The second, Moon Glade, is also close to Debussy, but the more chromatic Debussy of Et la lune descend sur le temple qui fut.

Sonata - a big romantic work with an intoxicating flow, it is pure Ireland. The second movement is one of his Chanctonbury Ring pieces, this being a mystically haunting location on the South Downs which may also lie behind Legend. (It should be obvious to those who have seen any of my recent posts that this is something I have been very engaged with in the last year, and that Chanctonbury was one of the destinations I visited on my project)

London Pieces - reflective of the town in which he lived, there are strongly Debussyian moments here too, especially in the last piece, Soho Forenoons, which shares characteristics with Debussy's Minstrels. But it is a strangely sad little piece, and very much in Ireland's style - the pianism more Ravelian in this one.

Amberley Wild Brooks (another of my visits), Equinox (another possible Chanctonbury one), April - three of his finest miniatures, the first two (and maybe the third) reflective of places on his beloved South Downs.

Sonatina - the Ravel influence is clear in this wonderful, tart little piece which, at the same time, influenced Howells' sonatina half a century later. It contains a great, hidden rebuke to Bax (a second subject based on the repeating notes CAD) which I love.

Sarnia - probably his piano masterpiece, a stunning three movement portrait of Guernsey.

All of his piano music is consummate stuff. His technique and his self-criticism were both powerful. His style is instantly recognisable and addictive. One of my favourite British composers. Of many other great works let me recommend his Cello Sonata (with a second movement haunted by a different location on the downs), which is one of the finest I know.

[vers la flamme]

Thanks very much, RS & Luke. This should be plenty to get started. The Boult Lyrita stuff looks great, and then I suppose I'll have to check out some of the solo piano music too.

[Luke]

For me you can't beat Parkin in the PC/Legend, just FWIW.

[VonStupp]

For the last one I couldn't see.
VS

[Roasted Swan]

For me you can't beat Parkin in the PC/Legend, just FWIW.

The "Lyrita Effect"!!!

[vandermolen]

I'm enjoying this fine disc which I asked my daughter to get me last Christmas - a good introduction to Ireland I think:

[Luke]

My list of essential Ireland piano music last night should really have included a few more pieces. I sat at the piano after writing it and immersed myself in this sumptuously beautiful body of music. I'm not sure why I missed off the following, in particular

Greenways - a three-movement work which exhibits Ireland in his most characteristic moods, utterly in control of technique, memorable in material, and very touching. Actually one of my favourite pieces of his

Ballad - I think this is Ireland's most advanced score, a complex and difficult work with some mysteriously stark writing and harmonies. But it speaks his individual language, which is so much a part of him that it sometimes seems all his best music is made of one piece - for instance in the Ballade there are pages which could have been torn from the central movement of the Piano Concert

Ballade of London Nights - a tricky one as Ireland never completed it, and the version you hear ends by simply returning to the opening material, which I don't think Ireland would have done in such a bald fashion. But it is a dizzying, hallucinatory ride in the centre, where Ireland goes for a night on the town, and the writing in this portion has a rawness, an elemental quality, like nothing else in his output.

[Luke]

Ballade of London Nights is an extraordinary piece, really. Here is some of what I have written about it in my book...

Like the similarly-titled Ballad for piano (1929), and like Legend, which was also composed in 1930, the Ballade of London Nights is one of Ireland's most visionary works. It starts as if a plainer, humbler cousin of Chelsea Reach—a similar but simpler and sparer rocking motion suggests the riverside, perhaps. Small complexities sneak in gradually as the music builds and becomes more dramatic—the city approaches. We begin to hear brief snatches of other sounds, interrupting the 'river music' more and more until it vanishes in the tumult amid cascades of notes. We are bombarded with a number of different musical 'scenes,' rapidly transitioning from one to the next as if we are walking from bar to bar, from club to club—we are in central London now, but the sweet, sad placidity of Soho Forenoons has been usurped by the wild raucousness of this putative 'Soho Nights.' The noise is a harsh racket—but a joyous, anarchic one. Much of the layout of the virtuosic piano writing in this central section is, again, quite Debussian and also reminiscent of certain pieces by Ravel and even, at moments, Stravinsky's Petrouchka. The harmonies grow heavily bitonal, finally coalescing into an atonal blur which rides rampantly up and down the keyboard until its hallucinatory haze subsides into the dark, peaceful ripples of the river at night; the opening music reappears as we return home.

[Spotted Horses]

I initially got to know Ireland through his chamber music, specifically this set which I believe was recommended to me by Luke more than a decade ago.



I later got to know Ireland's orchestral music and was flummoxed, I could hardly believe it was the same composer. The chamber music seemed so gently rhapsodic, beautifully structured even though it conformed to no traditional structure. The orchestral music was shockingly extroverted, to me. All of it is great.

I have the solo piano music but have yet to listen.

[Luke]

I have the solo piano music but have yet to listen.

Do, do, do!! It's the beating heart of of his output.

Listening to this....why not start with it. A faultless, exquisitely done work, Ireland at his best, all his finest features most wonderfully integrated.