trad.: She moved through the fair

Acclaimed Irish pianist Michael McHale’s début solo album features a delightful selection of piano miniatures inspired by Ireland’s rich musical heritage. The Irish Piano explores the influence of both Irish traditional and European classical music on this country’s composers and musicians.

The Irish Piano opens with Michael’s own arrangement of one of the earliest notated Irish melodies dating from the 16th century, Cailín ó cois tSuire Mé (I am a girl from the banks of the river Suir). In the English-speaking world it was known as ‘Callino Custurame’ and was originally believed to be of Italian origin.

Following on from this are two nocturnes by John Field, who coined the term and did so much to raise the bar for Irish classical music in Europe. These are complemented by Samuel Barber’s Nocturne, written as an homage to Field, and a first ever recording of the young Arnold Bax’s Nocturne, as well as music from another Irish-influenced composer Percy Grainger and the Waterford-born virtuoso William Vincent Wallace.

More first recordings on The Irish Piano of pieces by Bill Whelan, Ian Wilson and Philip Hammond are testament to the diversity of musical styles and voices that can be found in Irish contemporary piano music today. Add to these Michael McHale’s own unique arrangements of some of the country’s best loved traditional airs, and you a CD that is an accessible and engaging must-buy for anyone interested in Irish music.

Michael McHale says in his booklet notes to the collection: Altogether I hope it provides and interesting cross-section of the many different facets, musical styles and personalities that form the world of ‘The Irish Piano’.

"Based on a taoist tale (Prince Peiwoh playing a wondrous harp, whose stubborn spirit should be tamed but by the greatest of musicians), this album represents a breathing-in of various traditions which have helped me to create and give expression to my musical world, and one of the sources on which I have drawn most deeply is early music and the art of improvisation: an infinite source of inspiration. From the time that I began to compose and sing songs, it became more and more natural to me to accompany myself on the triple harp, and I was fascinated by the depth and subtlety of the Italian Baroque harp. It has a rich, enveloping sonority which is unlike that of any other harp.There are moments on the album when we hear a small Gothic harp, with its warm, remote and yet direct sound; and the most ancient of them all is a Celtic harp, with its magical, ancestral sounds. Peiwoh brings together the various languages, colours and sounds that I heard as a child growing up in Switzerland, at home with my parents, friends and other musicians.And each of them expresses and encapsulates a different part of myself. Each language has its own rhythm and melody, which it modulates in its own distinct way, influencing and inspiring the character and style of the song. Poetry is one of the essential aspects of this musical journey. Peiwoh leads us to the process of maturing, which has sometimes been painful and dramatic: life contains within it "little deaths", as in the poem by García Lorca (Song of the little death). In his short but intense poemMy heart, die or sing, Juan Ramón. Jiménez shows how music and life overcome fear, giving us the courage to walk on, as if our awareness of the proximity of death gave us a heightened awareness of life and its infinite possibilities." Arianna Savall

A welcome break after a hard day's work! The lark, the ash and the English country garden are celebrated in gentle piano music and English folk song. The plaintive oboe and the haunting sounds of the lute and flute add to the atmosphere of calm and contemplation.

Alan Hacker demonstrates the whole range and development of the clarinet from the ancient chalumeau, through baroque, classical and romantic instruments to the modern clarinet. He is ably assisted by Richard Burnett on organ, spinet, harpsichord and fortepianos.

Although folksong is a relatively simple and direct form of music, it is no easy matter to give a definition of a true folksong or to determine how it originated. Goethe, himself a collector, admitted the difficulty when he confessed: We are always invoking the name of Volkslied without knowing quite clearly what we mean by it.' There are countless old songs of a popular nature dating from centuries ago, but they do not all belong to folklore; there were the songs written for Shakespeare's plays, the lute songs played at the Tudor courts, ballads that were written by individual composers and, later, the popular music-hall songs of the Victorian age. True folk music, as officially defined by the International Folk Music Council in 1954, is 'the product of a musical tradition that has been evolved through the process of oral transmission. The factors that shape the tradition are continuity, which links the present with the past-variation, which springs from the creative impulse of the individual or the group; and selection by the community, which determines the form, or forms, in which the music survives.