Ireland - Decorations [Parkin]Well here's some piano works that are far from standard repertoire, and don't equate that with 'well it must be because they're not great', John Ireland is actually a very skillful piano miniaturist, some of his compositions are very much like Debussy [thinking his preludes here], and on each one of Eric Parkin's discs, there will at least be one gem you will fall 'head over heels' in love with.
Ireland's Decorations are wonderful, i was especially enchanted by the first piece 'The Island Spell', composed just before the First World War in Jersey, Ireland had a deep entrancement to the Channel Islands, and he spent quite some time there, gaining inspiration.
The piece starts off with a lovely evocation of bells [0:00-1:18], it is really really spellbinding, he starts using flats/sharps to add colour and variety [0:41], lots of black keys in this piece, and then what seems like scales up and down the keyboard [1:47-2:53], but if you watch the video below, they're more likes 'waves', after all this is a sea piece, at the same time Parkin/Ireland uniformly keeping the same spirit as the opening, the piece is slowly gaining in momentum and volume, there's a loud slightly stormy section, with some great virtuosic playing [2:53-3:40], and then comes the coda [3:40-4:12], a nice end to a surprising discovery of mine, Ireland is well worth checking out.
Here's Laura Tsai performing 'The Island Spell' on YouTube.
