Piano Works, Vol. 3 (Incls Green Ways)

Em Marshall
Albion Magazine Online, January 2009
John Lenehan continues his recording of John Ireland's piano works with this third volume. [Vol 1, 8.553700 and Vol 2, 8.553889 are also available-Ed.] The disc includes the Piano Sonata, the Four Preludes (of which the third is yet another arrangement of Holy Boy), and several solo piano pieces, including the slightly more substantial Ballade of London Nights. The works are all played with conviction, sensitivity and sincerity.

Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb International, October 2008
Lenehan offers a uniquely vital and dramatic reading of the Sonata… because Lenehan allows for urgent peaks but give necessary space for reflective lyricism. …In the finale he displays a perky confidence and striding power and surety that is unusual. The Preludes are excellent examples of Lenehan's quite extrovert take on Ireland's music generally - he brings a more muscular and tensile, less introvert approach, which is valuable on its own terms. … Ballade of London Nights is powerfully done and expands nicely at a standard tempo …Amberley Wild Brooks is against brisk and bracingly extrovert…In the main then Lenehan's are finely chiselled, just a touch steely performances, perfect for those who find Ireland too sanguine and becalmed.

Andrew Achenbach
Gramophone, October 2008
Lenehan…whips up quite a gale in [the "meaty" Piano Sonata's] first movement's development. …Lenehan effortlessly maintains the favourable impression left by the first two instalments in this series [Vol 1 8.553700, Vol 2 8.553889]. With his pellucid, exquisitely variegated tonal palette, he makes a gorgeous thing of The Almond Trees, plumbs real depths in Spring will not wait and the central "Cypress" from Green Ways, and masterminds superbly involving accounts of the gale-tossed Equinox and mercurial Ballade of London Nights. What's more, he has been accorded crystal-clear yet nicely atmospheric engineering.