The English Song Series Volume 18 - Ireland - Naxos: 8570467 - CD or download

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Another irresistible volume in The English Song Series: a compilation of John Ireland which reveals the sheer breadth of emotional experience and variegated piano writing within his songs. Every... — BBC Music Magazine, July 2008, 5 out of 5 stars More…

Release Date: 28th Apr 2008
Catalogue No: 8570467
Label: Naxos
Series: English Song Series
Length: 64 minutes

BBC Music Magazine

July 2008

Choral & Song Choice

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Ireland: Great Things

Work length2:19

$1.00

$1.30

Roderick Williams, Iain Burnside

Ireland: Three Songs

Work length6:28

$3.00

$3.90

Roderick Williams, Iain Burnside

No. 1, Summer Schemes

Track length2:04

$1.00

$1.30

No. 2, Her Song

Track length2:14

$1.00

$1.30

No. 3, Weathers

Track length2:10

$1.00

$1.30

Ireland: Sea Fever

Work length2:29

$1.00

$1.30

Roderick Williams, Iain Burnside

Ireland: The Bells of San Marie

Work length2:19

$1.00

$1.30

Roderick Williams, Iain Burnside

Ireland: The Vagabond

Work length2:04

$1.00

$1.30

Roderick Williams, Iain Burnside

Ireland: Santa Chiara

Work length2:19

$1.00

$1.30

Roderick Williams, Iain Burnside

Ireland: Two Songs

Work length6:19

$2.00

$2.60

Roderick Williams, Iain Burnside

No. 1, Tryst (In Fountain Court)

Track length4:04

$1.00

$1.30

No. 2, During Music

Track length2:15

$1.00

$1.30

Ireland: Marigold

Work length11:02

$3.00

$3.90

Roderick Williams, Iain Burnside

I. Youth's Spring-Tribute

Track length3:49

$1.00

$1.30

II. Penumbra

Track length4:09

$1.00

$1.30

III. Spleen

Track length3:04

$1.00

$1.30

Ireland: I Have Twelve Oxen

Work length1:56

$1.00

$1.30

Roderick Williams, Iain Burnside

Ireland: We'll to the Woods No More (text by a.E. Housman)

Work length7:26

$3.00

$3.90

Roderick Williams, Iain Burnside

I. We'll to the Woods No More

Track length2:38

$1.00

$1.30

II. In Boyhood

Track length1:48

$1.00

$1.30

III. Spring will not wait

Track length3:00

$1.00

$1.30

Ireland: 5 Poems

Work length9:51

$5.00

$6.50

Roderick Williams, Iain Burnside

No. 1, Beckon to me to come

Track length1:39

$1.00

$1.30

No. 2, In my sage moments

Track length2:45

$1.00

$1.30

No. 3, It was what you bore with you, Woman

Track length1:16

$1.00

$1.30

No. 4, The tragedy of That moment

Track length1:52

$1.00

$1.30

No. 5, Dear, think not That they will forget you

Track length2:19

$1.00

$1.30

Ireland: 2 Songs (1917-18)

Work length1:39

$1.00

$1.30

Roderick Williams, Iain Burnside

2 Songs: No. 2, The Cost

Track length1:39

$1.00

$1.30

Ireland: When I am Dead, My Dearest

Work length1:49

$1.00

$1.30

Roderick Williams, Iain Burnside

Ireland: Songs Sacred And Profane

Work length2:07

$1.00

$1.30

Roderick Williams, Iain Burnside

No. 4, The Salley Gardens

Track length2:07

$1.00

$1.30

Ireland: Tutto e sciolto

Work length1:51

$1.00

$1.30

Roderick Williams, Iain Burnside

Ireland: If There Were Dreams to Sell (Arr. F. Bye)

Work length2:28

$1.00

$1.30

Roderick Williams, Iain Burnside

Reviews
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Reviews

July 2008

Another irresistible volume in The English Song Series: a compilation of John Ireland which reveals the sheer breadth of emotional experience and variegated piano writing within his songs. Every word is tasted, pungently flavoured and given rigorous new life, with Iain Burnside's piano playing sentient to every second of Williams's singing.

2010

Despite the popularity of 'Sea Fever' and (literally) two or three others, the songs of John Ireland are often found oddly inaccessible. Of all the acknowledged masters of English songs in the 20th century Ireland is the hardest to pin down, to identify even. It has something to do with an elusiveness about his writing for the voice. When you look at the piano parts you feel contact with a pair of hands (his) touching the keyboard; but (with few exceptions) it's hard to believe that he 'sang' the songs as he wrote. The point here is that Roderick Williams is such a good singer he can make the voice part sound vocal and natural in a way not many have succeeded in doing. The songs are high for baritone, low for tenor, and they are written in a way that seems not to know of the difficulties of passing from one area of the voice to another or returning to a particular region with uncomfortable persistency. For Roderick Williams such difficulties seem hardly to exist. The listener's task eases proportionately.
Before going further, it should be said that the pianist, Iain Burnside, plays with a sureness of touch to match the highly skilled naturalness of Williams's singing. And it has to be added that Williams still does not seem to be a communicator in song in the sense that we can see the images flash before him (Terfel-like) as he sings the words. Sometimes, as in The Vagabond (Masefield, not Stevenson) and If there weredreams to sell, he catches the mood extraordinarily well even so. Williams and Burnside find a clearer feeling for Ireland's anxious tenderness and uneasy joy than in any previous recital of his songs.

September 2008

Roderick Williams is such a good singer he can make the voice part sound vocal and natural in a way not many have succeeded in doing. …the pianist, Iain Burnside, plays with a sureness of touch to match the highly skilled naturalness of Williams's singing.

20th June 2008

Among the 26 Ireland songs on this disc are two cycles devoted to Thomas Hardy, dating from 1925 and 1926. Settings of Hardy's poems were of course at the heart of Gerald Finzi's output of songs, and there is nothing in these Ireland cycles that approaches the fine-honed responses and harmonic imagination of those, sensitively though Williams and Burnside present them. In fact it's hard to pin down a distinctive creative personality in any of these songs, and ironically it's the cycle We'll to the Woods No More from 1927 that seems the most individual, with texts from that favourite source for early 20th-century English composers, AE Housman, that has the most character.

14th June 2008

Roderick Williams, with his sympathetic, warmly rounded baritone, and Iain Burnside are eloquent advocates of all these songs. Even they, though, cannot dispel a sense of sameishness, with pastoral-tinged melancholy too rarely relieved by something more impassioned or invigorating.

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