These are the two big works from what was originally a two-LP set of Harty's music that included also some of his lighter pieces, and it makes sense to single them out for a CD reissue. They are not especially individual (even some of the more overtly Irish pages set one wondering whether Dvorak or Tchaikovsky had Hibernian blood in their veins, and is that not Zoltan O'Kodaly lurking in the introduction to the Variations?) but they are very tuneful, likeable and in the best sense well made: the slow movement of the Concerto judged severely, is really rather long for its vein of pleasantly wistful lyricism, but Harty never gives in to the temptation to over-stuff its orchestration or to rhetorical pretence that his material is deeper than it is; the artless theme of the Variations is subjected to ingenious transformations (a lively jig, a charmingly demure salon waltz, a graciously lyrical pas-de-deux for the violinist and a solo cello) but never bombastic ones. The scoring is bright and clean in both pieces, and there are plenty of opportunities for gratefully ardent or nimbly capricious solo playing, seized with gusto by the admirable soloist.
The Ulster Orchestra was a smaller group than it is now when it made this, its first recording, and the closeness of the perspective in the Concerto shows up a lack of amplitude in the string sound somewhat, allowing the brass to dominate the tuttis, but the balance between soloist and orchestra is pleasingly natural. Try the last movement of the Concerto: it is irresistibly engaging and just the sort of thing that Bruch would have written had he got round to an Irish Fantasy.'