Sullivan, A: Symphony in E major 'Irish'

“…Charles Mackerras's ballet Pineapple Poll (1951) has become a light-music classic. David Lloyd-Jones gives the whole thing tremendous swing and rhythmic bite, with the Liverpool players on their top form, and the result is a delight.” BBC Music Magazine, November 2007 *****

“The Symphony is a different matter. …Lloyd-Jones has the edge on Hickox and the BBC Philharmonic… in the natural unfolding and emotional contrasts of the work. There's a more inherent urgency to the outer movements and greater attention to instrumental detail throughout. The second movement is especially beautifully done.” Gramophone Magazine, November 2007

“A coupling of these works has never appeared before. Yet Mackerras's medley of Savoy melodies provides an ideal appetiser for Sullivan's Irish Symphony, distinguished by delightfully easy-going charm and lightness of touch.
Mackerras recorded Pineapple Poll complete three times, the versions marked more by progressive improvements in sound quality than by changes in interpretation. If Lloyd-Jones shaves the odd second or two off Mackerras's timings for individual movements, it's due as much as anything to the latter's greater flexibility in allowing the score to unfold. Lloyd-Jones is less successful, too, in drawing out the individual themes of the elaborately woven score.
The Symphony is a different matter. This new version is an improvement both interpretatively and sonically on the pioneering Groves version, one that also lacks the first movement's exposition repeat. More particularly, Lloyd-Jones has the edge on Hickox and the BBC Philharmonic (Chandos – above) in the natural unfolding and emotional contrasts of the work. There's a more inherent urgency to the outer movements and greater attention to instrumental detail throughout.
The second movement is especially beautifully done. Even for those who have an earlier version there's a strong case for this inexpensive newcomer. For those who don't, the recommendation is a clear one.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“Plaudits all round to Richard Hickox and his excellent Manchester band (and the Chandos production team) for at last granting Sullivan's Irish symphony the first wholly recommendable digital recording it so richly deserves. And what a charmer of a work it is! Mendelssohn (and his Reformation Symphony above all) provides the dominant stylistic template, but the work is soundly constructed, effectively scored, and the scherzo's irresistibly perky oboe tune, in particular, already reveals a very real melodic gift. Hickox observes the first-movement repeat, but his direction is highly imaginative and he never allows tensions to sag. What's more, the playing of the BBC Philharmonic ideally combines bright-eyed affection, keen vigour and nimble polish.
Following the symphony's successful March 1866 première under August Manns, Sullivan was asked to provide a work for that same year's Norwich Festival. The sudden death of his father just a few weeks before the festival proper jolted Sullivan into penning the likeable overture, In Memoriam. In terms of inventive freshness and orchestral scope it's rather trumped by the astonishingly confident incidental music for Shakespeare's The Tempest that Sullivan had written nearly six years earlier while still a student at the Leipzig Conservatory. Again, Hickox and company do plentiful justice to Sullivan's precocious inspiration. A thoroughly enjoyable collection, then, accorded sound of glowing realism in the finest Chandos tradition.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010