EVENING SONGS

 

Delius and Ireland Songs

arranged for cello and piano

 

Julian Lloyd Webber, cello

Jiaxin Cheng, cello

John Lenehan, piano

 

Frederick DELIUS (1862-1934)

Sunset

Birds in the High Hall Garden*

In the Seraglio Garden

Love’s Philosophy

Over the Mountains High Serenade from Hassan

Through Long, Long Years

Little Birdie

Slumber Song

With Your Blue Eyes

 

John IRELAND (1879-1962)

Spring Sorrow

Evening Song*

Sea Fever

The Holy Boy

Baby

The Three Ravens

Hope

Ladslove

Summer

Schemes

Her Song

In Summer Woods*

 

World Première Recordings*

 

Frederick Delius’s beautiful songs show his extraordinary gift for melody.  John Ireland admired Delius enormously and his songs are inspired by a wide variety of literature, including his hugely popular setting of John Masefield’s Sea Fever. Renowned cellist Julian Lloyd Webber celebrates both composers’ remarkable melodic gifts in these sensitive arrangements, and pianist John Lenehan has received great acclaim for his Naxos recordings of Ireland’s complete piano music.

 

This recording revives a tradition which was common at the beginning of the last century, arranging the best of vocal music for instruments, of which the singing voice of the cello is one of the best suited. The performing cast here is something of a dream team. Julian Lloyd Webber’s large following will take little persuasion to explore his playing on this beautiful CD, and he is joined both by his cellist wife Jiaxin Cheng and Ireland expert John Lenehan, whose recordings include the Gramophone award winning Michael Nyman Piano Concerto.

 

Julian Lloyd Webber is one of today’s leading cellists. He has given the premières of more than fifty new works for cello and has inspired new compositions from composers as diverse as Malcolm Arnold and Joaquín Rodrigo to James MacMillan and Philip Glass. His partnership with John Lenehan began in the mid-1970s and they have since given recitals together all over the world.

 

“…the doyen of British cellists” The Strad

 

Naxos 8572902