Despite the popularity of “Sea Fever” and (literally) two or three others, the songs of John Ireland are often found oddly inaccessible. I would say that this recital will facilitate access. Of all the acknowledged masters of English songs in the 20th century Ireland is the hardest to pin down, to identify even. It has something to do with an elusiveness about his writing for the voice. When you look at the piano parts you feel contact with a pair of hands (his) touching the keyboard; but (with few exceptions) it’s hard to believe that he “sang” the songs as he wrote. The point here is that Roderick Williams is such a good singer he can make the voice part sound vocal and natural in a way not many have succeeded in doing. The songs are high for baritone, low for tenor, and they are written in a way that seems not to know of the difficulties of passing from one area of the voice to another or returning to a particular region with uncomfortable persistency. For Roderick Williams such difficulties seem hardly to exist. The listener’s task eases proportionately.

Before going further, it should be said that the pianist, Iain Burnside, plays with a sureness of touch to match the highly skilled naturalness of Williams’s singing. And it has to be added that Williams still does not seem to be a communicator in song in the sense that we can see the images flash before him (Terfel-like) as he sings the words. Sometimes, as in “The Vagabond” (Masefield, not Stevenson) and “If there were dreams to sell”, he catches the mood extraordinarily well even so. Conscious of resorting finally to the personal and subjective, I have to report finding more sympathy, a clearer feeling for Ireland’s anxious tenderness and uneasy joy than in any previous recital of his songs.