Thanks to the English Music festival, pianist David Owen Norris and other recent advocates, John Ireland (1879-1962) and his one-time pupil EJ Moeran (1892-1950) are now appreciated for what they are – tonal, late romantic, pastoral – rather than condemned for what they are not. Texts nod back to an Elizabethan madrigal past (as in Moeran’s increasingly chromatic “choral suite” Phyllida and Corydon), with settings of Sidney, Campion, Shakespeare and Nashe. The youthful Carice Singers perform these part songs with vigorous attention to detail and, a few tiny slips of intonation aside, beautifully blended tone. Hugo Popplewell is the wistful soloist in Ireland’s Sea Fever. This is music of heat haze, hey-nonny wistfulness: ideal high-summer listening.
