John Ireland
John Ireland wrote English art songs, piano miniatures and sacred choral music in a personal Impressionist vein, closer to Debussy and Ravel than to the folk-song school. His hymn Love Unknown and the carol The Holy Boy remain widely sung.
Most of his output is for voice and piano or for solo piano: settings of Housman, Hardy, Masefield and others, chamber sonatas, and short keyboard pieces that favour colour and atmosphere over large forms. The Channel Islands colour some of the piano writing; church work at St Luke’s, Chelsea, left him with carols, hymn tunes and the motet Greater love hath no man, still heard in remembrance services. A once-familiar Piano Concerto stands almost alone among bigger scores. On record he is often met through the songs and through Love Unknown in hymn programmes.
Compositions by John Ireland appear on
Sing Out With Joy
Cantus Choro, directed by Peter Chapman, sings seventeen favourite hymns from the Australian Hymn Book. Norman Kaye’s imaginative organ accompaniments give the well-known settings fresh dramatic shape and room for the choir to breathe.
Birds Bees and Butterflies
Songs of love and springtime sung by Pamela Wainwright and accompanied by Andrew Frampton.
I Heard You Singing: Songs My Father Taught Me
Baritone Jonathan Morton's first solo album is a personal programme of English art song, drawn from cycles and favourites his father once sang around the family piano.