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“If you started listening without knowing the subject matter, you’d easily mistake the work for a grandiose, Slavic-tinged religious oratorio...Hot, Red, Cold, Vibrant and Before Infrared are well-structured showpieces, attempts to convey irresistible forward movement, occasionally disrupted by Ince’s shifting offbeat thwacks and crashes. Before Infrared concludes in a mood of twinkling, shimmering serenity” Graham Rickson, The Arts Desk, 25th June 2011

“The performances are well judged, with some excellent playing of the all-important wind instruments.” Gramophone Magazine

“John Ireland’s Piano Concerto of 1930 receives a thoroughly sympathetic, lucid performance, as does the ominously darker Legend of three years later...A delightful disc.” The Telegraph, 29th September 2011 *****

“alert to the work's many changes of mood and wide range of pianistic demand. I particularly like [Lenehan's] musing, elegiac take on the haunting slow movement, and the orchestral playing is impressively responsive throughout...It's good to have new recordings of the Sea Idyll and the cheerful Three Dances, too.” BBC Music Magazine, December 2011 ****

“as John Lenehan's finely nuanced performance with John Wilson and the Liverpool orchestra shows, it's a pleasant enough work, predominantly introspective without extravagant displays of virtuosity, and which in its finale unexpectedly flirts with neoclassicism.” The Guardian, 22nd December 2011 ***

“a splendid new recording of what is undoubtedly the finest of all British piano concertos...Lenehan has already recorded a great deal of Ireland's piano music for Naxos with distinction and he is again at his finest here...the RLPO is on first-class form under the understanding direction of John Wilson, who is renowned as a passionate advocate of English music...A CD not to be missed by all lovers of English music.” Gramophone Magazine, December 2011

“Comparative listening to the meaty Sonata that Ireland wrote between 1918 and 1920 (the one work common to all three releases) finds both Rowlands and Bebbington allowing themselves rather greater breathing space than the more urgently propulsive Lenehan (who whips up quite a gale in the first movement's development).
Each is a mightily convincing proponent, though Rowlands's interpretation carries particular authority: during the late 1950s he studied intensively with Ireland (the booklet contains a most engaging and fascinating personal reminiscence) and it was Rowlands whom the composer recommended to Richard Itter of Lyrita for its complete recorded edition.
With no editing facilities available, single takes were a necessity in sessions spanning January 1959 to March 1963 which took place in the music room of Itter's Buckinghamshire home.
Captured in perfectly acceptable mono sound, Rowlands's memorably intimate performances betoken a very special empathy for this repertoire.
Indeed, his playing throughout these three well filled CDs evinces a selfless dedication, recreative wonder and abundant poetic instinct.
As for the two new collections, Lenehan effortlessly maintains the favourable impression left by the first two instalments in his series (reviewed above). With his pellucid, exquisitely variegated tonal palette, he makes a gorgeous thing of The Almond Trees, plumbs real depths in Spring will not wait and the central “Cypress” from Green Ways, and masterminds superbly involving accounts of the gale-tossed Equinox and mercurial Ballade of London Nights. What's more, he has been accorded crystal-clear yet nicely atmospheric engineering.
For first-timers, however, Bebbington's programme provides a pretty much ideal introduction, containing two of Ireland's most popular and durable achievements, namely Decorations and London Pieces – both given with such winning aplomb, scrupulous care and heartwarming sense of new discovery that it's hard not to fall in love with them all over again (the vernally fresh 'Chelsea Reach' positively beams with joy).
Elsewhere, Bebbington displays wonderful control in the leaner-textured and economically argued Sonatina, just as he is acutely responsive to the fearful undertow of the Ballade (close cousin to the riveting Legend for piano and orchestra). Somm's sound is clean and true.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010