John Ireland (1879-1962)
Rebeca Omordia (piano)
rec. January 2025, Potton Hall, Suffolk, UK
Resonus Classics RES10372 [72]

For readers of a certain age, the progress of recordings of piano music by John Ireland has been astonishing. I first heard his piano music on an old Saga album (XID5206) which an older friend lent to me; Alan Rowlands played the Decorations and the Holy Boy: Prelude. The album was released in 1962. In the early 1970s, I acquired three Lyrita records of Ireland’s piano works, once again played by Rowlands. Since then there have been another four more or less complete editions of this repertoire: two by Eric Parkin (on Lyrita and on Chandos), John Lenehan (on Naxos) and Mark Bebbington (on SOMM). All bring their unique talents to this notable music. Rebeca Omordia has chosen a fine conspectus of Ireland’s piano compositions: three major essays and a selection of five ephemeral but nonetheless important “character pieces”.

The recital gets off to a great start with an outstanding account of the expansive and visionary Piano Sonata in E minor. This is Ireland’s most significant piano composition – but certainly not his most popular or oft played. He wrote it between October 1918 and January 1920. Although it is not a “war work”, its period of gestation coincided with the end of hostilities. According to the liner notes, it is conceived on a large scale not so much in temporal terms as “in concentrated intellectual command and expressive ire”. Ireland once suggested that the first movement of his Piano Sonata was about “life”, the second was “more ecstatic” and the last was “inspired by a rough autumnal day on Chanctonbury Ring & [the] old British Encampment”. It is a good hermeneutic for appreciating this music.

The opening movement, Allegro moderato, features an “emotional struggle” never quite resolved, although it does not descend into violence, nor is tranquillity discovered. The slow movement, Non troppo lento, is hardly ecstatic: it is hard won and deeply felt. The finale, Con moto moderato, is the most demanding movement, with a “jubilant” conclusion, that certainly creates a vivid evocation of the South Downs topography. References back to earlier themes and motifs bring the Sonata to a satisfying conclusion. It gets a rewarding performance here, with a remarkable equilibrium between the mystical, the late romantic and the passionate elements.

The three-movement Decorations is another one of Ireland’s most significant works. It was completed in the years before the First World War. There is a watery mood to The Island Spell, which may remind the listener of Ravel or Debussy. It is possible that quieter passages from Shakespeare’s The Tempest may have been an inspiration. The actual quotation heading the score is taken from a poem by the Symbolist poet, Arthur Symons. Moon-Glade is a decent evocation of a melancholic poem about “sorrowful dreams,” also by Symons. It is characterised by “subtle dissonance” created with bitonality. The final section, The Scarlet Ceremonies, is the most dramatic and intense, drawing on a passage from Welsh poet Arthur Machen’s occult tale The White People. The listener is led into a world far removed from the pastoral convention popular at that time. What the Ceremonies were, we must imagine, but pianist Eric Parkin has suggested “forgotten and forbidden pagan rites”. It is certainly not a walk along The Towing Path.

There is a definite impressionistic feel to the first of the Two Pieces from 1921, Amberley Wild Brooks. It is predicated on “rippling, sparkling sonorities” which create a mood of “rushing, fluttering and trembling of nature, green springing, joyful”. There is the occasional irruption of a melody, but this is about keyboard figurations. On the other hand, Remembrance has been likened to moments in Wagner’s Parsifal in its solemnity and introspection. These delightful pieces deserve to be better kent.

Two Pieces for Piano from 1925 are often underestimated as mere character pieces. This is unfair. April is a gentle miniature, which complements its title. Calm is balanced by a short but virtuosic climax in the middle section before the recapitulation of the pastoral theme. In contrast, Bergomask could nod to the Italian courtship dance hailing from Bergamo. It is spirited and mischievous, and may remind the listener of Ragamuffin from Ireland’s London Pieces. They get convincing performances here.

One of the highlights of the disc is Rebeca Omordia’s superb performance of Sarnia: An Island Sequence. which Eric Parkin described as one of Ireland’s pianistic masterpieces. The title refers to the Roman name for Guernsey in the Channel Islands, a place of deep personal resonance for the composer. This suite – or is it a Fantasy-Sonata? – would become Ireland’s final major work for solo piano. He began writing it in Guernsey and completed it upon returning to Banbury, England in 1940, when he was evacuated shortly before the German occupation. There are three movements: Le Catioroc (named after a Neolithic site), In a May Morning, and Song of the Springtides. They form a wonderful tribute to the island the composer first visited in his late twenties.

The pianist’s role in Sarnia is to navigate the suite’s complexity sensitively, balancing its mystical, and at at times pagan, nuances with luminous depictions of the island’s landscape. Of importance is the subtle dichotomy between innocence and supressed passion in the second movement. It was dedicated to Michael Rayson, the son of a hotel owner, with whom Ireland was infatuated. It is one of the loveliest movements he composed. As he wrote to Clifford Curzon, the final movement requires the performer to “display charm, subtlety, passion, and above all [the] beauty of a high alluring order”.

It is good that the recital ends with a less well-known number as a kind of encore after Sarnia. Columbine appeared in an anthology of pieces, Down the Centuries, edited by English-born Canadian administrator, teacher, pianist, conductor and arranger Leonard Isaacs. Connoisseurs of Italian commedia dell’arte will recall Columbine as clever, charming, witty, graceful, flirtatious and resourceful. She forever outsmarts masters and lovers with a playful twist of cunning. Ireland’s little Ravelian waltz is full of charm and insight into this engaging lady, but with a touch of melancholy.

The soloist’s website tells us that she was born in Romania to a Romanian mother and Nigerian father. She studied in Bucharest, Birmingham and London. Her acclaimed recordings include African Pianism and Errollyn Wallen’s Piano Concerto. Omordia’s doctoral thesis is focused on John Ireland’s piano music.

Robert Matthew-Walker comprehensive liner notes provide a great introduction to the composer  and the music. The booklet is illustrated with six photographs of the performer, but sadly none of the composer. It is a pity that we do not get the quotations that head each movement in the scores of Decorations and Sarnia. They would have enriched the listener’s experience further.

Rebeca Omordia’s recital distils Ireland’s piano legacy with clarity and passion, from mystical movements to sparkling miniatures. It is an engaging tribute to a composer whose musical imagination continues to inspire and astonish.

John France

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Contents
Piano Sonata in E minor (1918-1920)
Decorations (1912-1913)
Two Pieces for Piano (1921)
Two Pieces for Piano (1925)
Sarnia: An Island Sequence (1940-1941)
Columbine (1949)