Carolyn Dobbin and Iain Burnside have come up with another gem of a disc for Delphian (its predecessor, ‘Calen-O: Songs from the North of Ireland’, deservedly received a cordial recommendation from Jeremy Dibble in May 2018). This time, the focus is on two women composers from Northern Ireland: Dorothy Parke (1904 90) and Joan Trimble (1915-2000). I recall the latter’s impressive 1949 song-cycle The County Mayo with its two-piano accompaniment appearing on a useful Marco Polo anthology devoted to her songs and chamber music, and can report that Trimble’s deftly idiomatic inspiration – to texts by Dublin-born James Stephens (1880-1950) – emerges as freshly as the day it was conceived, with Dobbin enjoying sparkling support from Burnside and Ingrid Sawers. Captivating, too, are the settings of Thomas Hardy’s ‘Weathers’ and John Masefield’s ‘A Wanderer’s Song’ – and we also get two numbers from Blind Raftery, the opera that Trimble (who studied with John Larchet, Arthur Benjamin, Howells and Vaughan Williams) wrote in 1957 for BBC Television.

However, the majority of the programme concentrates on the output of Dorothy Parke, for many years a much-loved and respected figure (along with her husband, Douglas Brown) in Belfast’s musical life (her pupils included the soprano Norma Burrowes and The Chieftains’ harpist Derek Bell) and perhaps best known for her songs for children (first published in 1975, By Winding Roads, subtitled ‘Fifteen songs of the Irish countryside’, remains in print). Certainly, ‘Wee Hughie’ warms the cockles in its touching simplicity, and is one of a number of items here that still feature in song festivals. Co-winner of a competition organised by the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts (now Arts Council of Northern Ireland) to mark the 1951 Festival of Britain, the song-cycle A Honeycomb inhabits a more adventurous harmonic landscape and sophisticated mode of expression, traits it shares with the affecting ‘The House and the Road’ and elegiac 1963 setting of WB Yeats’s ‘The Falling of the Leaves’ (which grew out of a visit to the poet’s beloved Sligo). The landscape in and around County Down’s Mourne Mountains (where Dorothy and Douglas owned a holiday home) likewise proved a lasting inspiration: try the delectable ‘Kilkeel’ (her first published composition, from 1933) to words by local poet Richard Rowley (1877-1947).

No praise can be too high for Dobbin’s assured and strongly communicative advocacy of all this appealing material, to say nothing of Burnside’s customarily exemplary pianism. Paul Baxter’s production values are out of the top drawer. First-rate presentation, too, featuring invaluable booklet notes by Nuala McAllister Hart and Joanna McVey (Trimble’s daughter), and full texts. A most gratifying issue.