In Blue Sea or Sky

A lovely collection from a scrupulously attentive young Irish harpist

Record and Artist Details

Composer or Director: William (James) Mathias, Ian Wilson, (Herbert) Hamilton Harty, Brian Boydell, Benjamin Britten

Genre:

Instrumental

Label: Riverrun

Media Format: CD or Download

Media Runtime: 64

Mastering:

Stereo
DDD

Catalogue Number: RVRCD59

Tracks:

Composition Artist Credit
Pack of Fancies for a Travelling Harper Brian Boydell, Composer
Brian Boydell, Composer
Clíona Doris, Harp
Suite Benjamin Britten, Composer
Benjamin Britten, Composer
Clíona Doris, Harp
In blue sky or sea Ian Wilson, Composer
Clíona Doris, Harp
Ian Wilson, Composer
Spring Fancies: two preludes (Herbert) Hamilton Harty, Composer
(Herbert) Hamilton Harty, Composer
Clíona Doris, Harp
Santa Fe Suite William (James) Mathias, Composer
Clíona Doris, Harp
William (James) Mathias, Composer
Born in the north of Ireland, Clíona Doris graduated from Queen’s University, Belfast in 1992, continued her studies under Susann McDonald at Indiana University and currently combines an active concert career with teaching duties on the String Faculty of Dublin’s Royal Irish Academy of Music. Her programme is immaculately dispatched and wide-ranging. I particularly enjoyed Brian Boydell’s sequence from 1970 entitled A Pack of Fancies for a Travelling Harper; a tribute to the blind Irish bard Carolan, its five movements are full of strong ideas and intriguing sonorities. Next comes the delectable Suite that Britten wrote in 1969 for Osian Ellis, followed by Ian Wilson’s in blue sea or sky, an imaginative evocation commissioned and premièred by Doris in 2000, and yet another impressive addition to the fast-growing output of this fine Belfast-born composer. That only leaves Hamilton Harty’s Spring Fancies (a fragrant diptych dating from 1911) and William Mathias’s idiomatic and characteristically communicative Santa Fe Suite (1988). The sound lacks a little bloom and focus – and I’d have preferred longer gaps between individual works – but this remains a treat nonetheless.

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