Day 322
John Ireland: Piano concerto in E flat major
Kathryn Stott
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Andrew Davis
John Ireland is another of those mid 20th century musicians whose name is familiar but whose music is unknown to me - I might have heard a film score of his at some time but nothing sticks in the memory.
This piano concerto was for a while an enormously popular piece and was a staple of Prom performances for many years - then it dropped out of fashion and is now only rarely performed. I can’t say that I was sorry that I had got so far in my musical life without hearing it. It seemed rather a routine piece with nothing particularly memorable either in melodic material or harmonic invention - there were, to be fair, a few moments of quite snappy rhythms which did break up some of the monotony, but otherwise I didn’t find much here to keep me interested. Partly is it that I am not a great fan of the concerto form - when I look back at this project it is surprising how few concerti I have listened to and even fewer than really made an impression. I’ve no idea whether this work is typical of Ireland’s work but I don’t feel inclined to spend much time finding out - there are plenty of other things to listen to first.
No comments:
Post a Comment