Mark Stone uses all his gifts in this splendid collection of John Ireland’s songs to bring out their varied range of expression. One might say that he treats them with the subtlety that other singers adopt when singing German Lieder. These lovely and varied songs certainly deserve it.

Sensibly, Stone starts off with the best-known of all Ireland’s songs, his setting of Masefield’s ‘Sea Fever’. His speed is daringly slow but he sustains it superbly, not least on the final sustained pianissimos in each stanza, ‘And the seagulls crying’ or ‘When the long trick’s over’. The delicacy of Stone’s tonal shading is exquisite.

In a vigorous song such as ‘Hope the Hornblower’, setting a poem by Henry Newbolt, the bite of Stone’s attack, matched by the accompaniment of Sholto Kynoch, is ideal, full of flair and swagger. The ordering of the songs also helps, with military songs and songs of the sea providing revealing sequences. If these songs are out of fashion, then Stone and Kynoch make them all sound fresh and new.

Ireland’s settings of Rupert Brooke include the most celebrated poem of all, ‘The Soldier’, simply dedicated, bringing out its form as a sonnet. Stone and his partner are particularly effective in the sharply rhythmic songs, often in march-time, but it is striking how Stone can always vary his tone colours beautifully for the slow, meditative songs. Altogether a disc to leave one freshly enthusiastic about the writing of John Ireland, often strikingly supported by his idiomatic piano-writing.