Essential Ireland

Although born in Cheshire in the north of England, John Ireland and his music are synonymous with London and the south of England. He moved to the capital at the age of 14 and remained there for most of the next six decades, studying composition under Charles Villiers Stanford at the Royal College of Music, where his fellow students included Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst and Frank Bridge. Soon after the end of World War I, Ireland joined the staff of the RCM, where his pupils included Benjamin Britten, Alan Bush and E J Moeran.

29 Tracks • 2:56:47

Ireland's music was inspired by images, landscape and poetry, and his love of nature and the outdoors. From his teacher Stanford, he had a thorough grounding in the works of Beethoven and Brahms, but he was also influenced by the music of Stravinsky and Bartók, Debussy and Ravel through which he developed his own form of "English Impressionism", a style closer to the French model than the folksong-inspired music of his English contemporary Vaughan Williams. He was predominantly a composer for the piano and his Piano Sonata (1918-20), regarded as his response to World War I, is an outstanding example of a British piano sonata, with its spacious yet coherent organisation, melodic invention and rich harmonies, which at times prefigure Messiaen. Ireland regarded it as his best work. Sarnia is another of his piano masterpieces, an evocative three-movement work inspired by the island of Guernsey (the title is the island's Roman name). His piano miniatures are no less imaginative, from the serenity of Chelsea Reach, inspired by "the flickering gas lamps reflected in the dark waters of the Thames," to the melancholic Ballade of London Nights and the pastoral charm of Amberley Wild Brooks, inspired by a beautiful area of marshland in Sussex where Ireland lived. His vocal writing is also very fine, reflecting a passionate interest in poetry by William Blake, Thomas Hardy, Christina Rossetti, John Masefield and Rupert Brooke, among others.