Parry Jones (tenor)
Peers Coetmore (cello)
Frederick Stone (piano)
Song: Invitation in Autumn
(first performance in England)
Cello Sonata
Six Songs of Seumas O'Sullivan
For the past twenty years or so E. J. Moeran has been among the most prominent of British composers. Born near London in 1894, he is of Irish descent, though in his early years he lived in Norfolk and served in the Norfolk Regiment in the 1914-18 war. He studied at the Royal College of Music, and later with John Ireland. In recent years he has lived in London and Herefordshire, with periods of residence on the West coast of Ireland, where the romantic scenery, particularly of County Kerry, has inspired some of his finest works, including the Symphony and the Violin Concerto (though the Symphony also has Norfolk associations). Throughout his career he has taken an active interest in folk music.
The Cello Sonata was written for
Peers Coetmore , the composer's wife, who played it for the first time in Dublin last May. Seumas O'Sullivan , the distinguished Irish poet, is a friend of Moeran, whose settings of six of his poems were written in Ireland three years ago.