Gramophone January 2005
Ireland Cello Sonata
Not everything on this disc is new. Many readers will already know Julian Lloyd Webber’s deeply felt version of Ireland’s marvellous Cello Sonata (1923) with John McCabe. A quarter of a century after it was made, the recording still sounds extremely well, as does these artists’ big-hearted 1987 recording of The Holy Boy in the composer’s arrangement.
No, the real reason for investigating this ASV release are the finely prepared recordings (from December 2003) of the First Violin Sonata (1 908-09) and Second Piano Trio (1917). Lloyd Webber and McCabe are joined for the latter by Daniel Hope for a trenchant performance of this single- movement work, which owes its defiant character to the appalling events of the First World War: you can almost see the marching troops in the grim strut of the Allegro giusto some four minutes in. Like the Cello Sonata, this intensely poignant score shows him at the peak of his powers.
The earlier Violin Sonata No 1 is less troubled — and the thematic material isn’t as distinctive as that of the Trio — but a stylish and lyrically rewarding work nonetheless: anyone who responds to the Fauré or Grieg sonatas should feel at home. Hope and McCabe do it proud. Like Lydia Mordkovitch and Ian Brown before them, theirs is an expansive, no-holds-barred conception that doesn’t toy with the music; nor do they overlook the vein of wistful intimacy that makes both Frederick Grinke’s 1945 recording with the composer and Paul Barritt’s 1995 account with Catherine Edwards so memorable. As in the Trio, the sound is generally first class, if occasionally hard- edged. I wonder if Hope and McCabe could be persuaded to give us the intoxicating Second Violin Sonata of 1917?
Andrew Achenbach
