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Reviews Gramophone Classical Music Guide 2010 “Assembled from three of Boult’s four Lyrita LPs devoted to Ireland, this generous programme launches with the red-blooded symphonic prelude Tritons (a student offering from 1899). Boult and the LPO do not shirk the melodrama and go on to lend equally dedicated advocacy to the magical 1913 prelude TheForgotten Rite and glowering 1921 symphonic rhapsody Mai-Dun. The stand-out track remains Boult’s wonderfully spry and observant account of A LondonOverture (1936), which is easily a match for Barbirolli’s almost exactly contemporaneous LSO version for EMI. The 1942 Epic March, too, glints with memorable defiance. The JuliusCaesar diptych is less immediately gripping, but the five-movement suite compiled by Charles Mackerras from Ireland’s 1946 score for Ealing Studios’ The Overlanders certainly has its moments, not least the touching ‘Romance’ (which plunders material from A Downland Suite of 1932) and infectiously jaunty outer portions of the central ‘Intermezzo’. Considering some of these sessions took place as long ago as December 1965, the judiciously refurbished sound still packs quite a punch. Altogether a very welcome reissue. “This CD usefully brings together a clutch of Ireland orchestral works that Sir Adrian recorded for Lyrita in the 1960s. Though subsequent recordings have appeared from other labels and other conductors these performances are still required listening.” John Quinn, musicweb-international.com “The forty plus year old sound remains an object lesson taught by the analogue tradition to the digital era. A classic John Ireland collection – magically done.” Rob Barnett, musicweb-international.com |
