Songs from the North of Ireland
Dorothy Parke (1904-1990)
Joan Trimble (1915-2000)
Contents after the review
Carolyn Dobbin (mezzo-soprano), Amy Ní Fhearraigh (soprano) *
Iain Burnside (piano), Ingrid Sawers (piano) +
rec. 2023 and 2024, Greyfriars Kirk, Edinburgh
Texts included
Delphian DCD34329 [62]

Dorothy Parke and Joan Trimble were born eleven years apart. Parke came from a well-to-do background in Derry and was encouraged to study in London with Paul Corder before joining the Royal Academy full-time as a student. The remainder of her life was spent performing and teaching the piano – one of her students was Norma Burrowes – and composing a body of songs for children. Joan Trimble, born in Enniskillen, is the better-known, as she was part of a piano duo with her sister Valerie. Joan studied piano with Arthur Benjamin at the Royal College and composition with Howells, later Vaughan Williams.

Trimble is also the more recorded of the two. Years ago, Marco Polo released a disc devoted to her piano music and songs (8225059) which included The County Mayo, her little song cycle that is also included in Delphian’s release. The only other song that has been recorded before would appear to be Dorothy Parke’s The House and the Road. Everything else is claimed to be new to disc.

Parke’s songs are charming, brief, simple, supple and salon-sweet. They’re attractively lyrical and in no way combative. Rather, they’re the product of an imagination that’s effortlessly communicative. She cleverly varies her piano patterns, whether striding confidently or suffused with Irish folkloric spirit. Her cycle A Honeycomb includes five brief and varied settings, alternately romantic, folkish, fast and droll, and the selection of her songs also includes her first known example, Kilkeel written in 1933. Two of her songs require two singers, and Amy Ní Fhearraigh joins mezzo Carolyn Dobbin for The Wind from the West and Has Sorrow thy young days shaded?

Though they’re as concise as Parke’s, Joan Trimble’s songs employ a more sophisticated palette. In The County Mayo the songs are varied, and contrasted strongly, whether athletically fiery, full of bardic melancholy or exuding a rich folkloric sense, complete with exuberant flourishes. It’s an exciting and concise example of her art. There’s even a spicy Spanish setting, full of melismatic resilience, derived from her last BBC commission, the one-hour opera Blind Raftery. Her A Cradle Song is slow and steady, The Fairies full of jaunty folklore and A Wanderer’s Song animated by a ‘tripping’ piano accompaniment. All her works were composed in a two-decade period between 1937 and 1957.

Carolyn Dobbin and Iain Burnside explore the song’s charms – whether winsome or jaunty – with a proper appreciation of their status. Nothing is over-inflated, but neither do they play up the faery elements either. Pianist Ingrid Sawers accompanies Trimble’s The County Mayo very adeptly. The recording in Greyfriars Kirk, Edinburgh has been sensitively balanced and as in their last album, Calen-O, Dobbin and Burnside are adroit explorers of Ulster’s recent musical past.

Jonathan Woolf

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Contents
Dorothy Parke
The Road to Ballydare
Song of Good Courage
St Columba’s Poem on Derry
To the Sailors
Wee Hughie
Song in Exile
A Honeycomb
The Wind from the West *
Kilkeel
Moon Magic
Sing heigh-ho!
Has sorrow thy young days shaded? *
The House and the Road
The Falling of the Leaves
Joan Trimble
The County Mayo +
Weathers
Son ri en los ojos
A Cradle Song
Over the purple hills
The Fairies
A Wanderer’s Song