CD 1
[56:09]
Decorations (The Island Spell; Moonglade;
The Scarlet Ceremonies) (1912) [10:15];
The Almond Trees [3:33]; Four Preludes
(The Undertone; Obsession; The Holy
Boy; Fire of Spring) (1913-15) [11:03];
Prelude in E flat [5:14]; Rhapsody (1915)
[7:50]; The Towing-Path [3:40]; Merry
Andrew [3:02]; London Pieces (Chelsea
Reach; Ragamuffin; Soho Forenoons) (1917-20)
[11:32]
CD 2 [52:45]
Summer Evening (1919) [4:15]; Piano
Sonata (1918-20) [24:05]; Two Pieces
(For Remembrance, Amberley Wild Brooks)
(1921) [7:01]; The Darkened Valley (1921)
[3:42]; Equinox (1922) [2:22]; On a
Birthday Morning (1922) [3:19]; Soliloquy
(1925) [3:13]; Two Pieces (April, Bergomask)
(1925) [7:48]
CD 3 [51:04]
Sonatina (1926-27) [9:50]; Ballade (1929)
[9:26]; Two Pieces (February’s Child,
Aubade) (1929, 1930) [7:52]; Month’s
Mind (1933) [4:25]; Greenways: Three
Lyric Pieces (The Cherry Trees; Cypress;
The Palm and May) (1938) [8:01]; Sarnia
– An Island Sequence (Le Catioroc; In
a May Morning; Song of the Springtides)
(1939-40) [20:30]
Eric Parkin was the
motor of Lyrita’s Ireland Chamber Music
box and here he is shouldering the entire
responsibility for the solo piano music
The CDs faithfully replicate the three
LPs that so valuably and importantly
served Ireland’s admirers and that themselves
replaced the earlier mono Lyrita set
performed by that other great Ireland
performer Alan Rowlands. How fitting
then that Rowlands’s cycle is to be
restored to the catalogue in 2008. To
have these two cycles, not entirely
identical, in restored sound is a luxury
that few could have dreamed of. If we
thought that Lyrita would neglect its
mono back catalogue we were proved,
thankfully, and resoundingly, wrong.
There is just under
three hours of music here and everything
Parkin plays is illuminated by his sensitive
understanding and control. Of course
he’s returned to it since on Chandos
but this body of Lyrita work catches
him at a real peak of perception. He
evokes the Debussian glitter and ostinati
of The Island Spell with captivating
incision; so too the mysterious imprecations
of Moonglade, the central panel
of Decorations. The Four Preludes,
some of the strongest music in the first
volume, has a truly hypnotic performance
of The Undertone and The Holy
Boy which in Parkin’s hands is full
of sentiment without ever becoming sentimental.
But when Parkin digs into the more panache-driven
writing he can be equally convincing
– hear the dramatic, indeed convulsing
passages of the Rhapsody. Nor is he
shy of the occasional levities – the
vital wit of Ragamuffin from
the London Pieces for instance.
The second volume’s
opening with the wistful Summer Evening
was a good ploy. Its wistfulness acts
as an unexpected prelude to the Sonata,
a work closely related to The Forgotten
Rite. Here the powerful chordal
playing is just as assured as the more
pliant right hand tracery. And the unsettled,
nagging left hand lines in the central
movement are strongly evoked, and indicative
of gradations of note placement and
understanding from this most understanding
of Ireland interpreters. Recordings,
including a piano roll, exist of the
composer essaying, amongst other things,
Amberley Wild Brooks – but how
gorgeously Parkin plays this and how
languidly too. The flurried raindrops
of Equinox attest to his sense
of colour and texture. On a Birthday
Morning is jauntiness itself and
April as verdant as ever.
The final volume opens
with the Sonatina – full of glittering
concision, singing lyricism, melancholy
and truly rhythmically charged brio.
Greenways is amongst Ireland’s
most charming pieces with the fulsome,
laden burnish of The Cherry Trees
vying with the fanciful play of
The Palm and May for interest.
But it’s Sarnia that is the high
point of the last volume, maybe even
of the set as a whole. The heavy pedal
points of Le Catioroc foretell
brooding silence and we find in the
central tableau, In a May Morning,
what I remember Max Harrison once described
as Ireland’s "pungent clarity."
How apt for this piece. And so with
Sarnia’s final piece, Song
of the Springtides we return to
Debussy, where we began, albeit with
a vital admixture of zest, chordal strength
and Ireland’s own expressive generosity.
Christopher Palmer’s
eleven page notes are reprised for this
set and are a laudable summation of
Ireland’s rugged, melancholy, harmonically
rich, myth-centred and often impressionistic
nature pieces, brilliantly realised
here.
Jonathan Woolf
see also review
by Rob Barnett
for details
Eric Parkin (piano) 
