John Ireland’s radiant Piano Concerto was written for his protégée Helen Perkin, and is infused with her sense of vitality. The result is a brilliant work of high spirits and expressive longing. Perkin also premièred Legend, a dark, brooding evocation of the ancient landscape of Harrow Hill on the Sussex Downs. Of the solo piano works, the First Rhapsody is earlier, virtuosic, and in the Lisztian tradition, whereas Indian Summer is a rural postcard of beguiling simplicity. John Lenehan has recorded three volumes of Ireland’s solo piano music (8553700, 8553889 and 8570461) to universal admiration: ‘Lenehan offers a uniquely vital and dramatic reading of the sonata.’ (MusicWeb International on Vol. 3)
“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
Gramophone Magazine
