John Lenehan - Recordings

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_IRELAND: Piano Works, Vol. 4

John Lenehan has already recorded a great deal of Ireland’s piano music for Naxos with distinction and he is again at his finest here.
Gramophone Choice

John Ireland’s Piano Concerto of 1930 receives a thoroughly sympathetic, lucid performance, as does the ominously darker Legend of three years later. The concerto, while infused with Prokofiev’s zest, is pure Ireland in spirit, an amalgam that Lenehan captures ideally, as he does the passion of the First Rhapsody and A Sea Idyll. A delightful disc.
The Daily Telegraph (5 stars)

John Lenehan’s new offering with the RLPO is alert to the work’s many changes of mood and wide range of pianistic demands. I particularly liked his musing, elegaic take on the haunting slowmovement and the orchestral playing is impressively responsive throughout.
BBC Music Magazine

In the concerto he is excellent, his playing lucid, nicely paced and in the quiet passages possesses the desired limpid quality. Here, and in his powerful account of the Legend, he is admirably partnered by the Liverpool orchestra in fine form conducted by John Wilson.
David's Review Corner, David Denton

_IRELAND: Piano Works, Vol. 3

Lenehan makes the strongest possible case for the Preludes and poetic shorter pieces and plays with grace and dignity.
Financial Times

Lenehan effortlessy maintains the favourable impression left by the first two instalments in his series. With his pellucid, exquisitely variegated tonal palette, he makes a gorgeous thing of The Almond Trees, plumbs real depths in Spring will not wait and the central “Cypress” from Green Ways, and masterminds superbly involving accounts of the gale-tossed Equinox and mercurial Ballade of London Nights.
Gramophone

_IRELAND: Piano Works, Vol. 2

John Lenehan, a strong and sympathetic interpreter, time and again makes you wonder at works aptly described as ‘some of the most appealing English piano music written this century, too long neglected. Lenehan’s playing is of a special integrity and musicianship.
Gramophone

The harmonies are luscious, the melodies seductive and John Lenehan's caressing touch and sultry tone are just right for the repertoire. You won't find these wistful English miniatures better played or more naturally recorded.
The Sunday Telegraph (CD of the Week)

_IRELAND: Piano Works, Vol. 1

John Lenehan is a very accomplished performer: not only is his technical address impeccable, but he also possesses a strikingly wide dynamic range variety of tone colour......Lenehan's supremely affectionate and wonderfully articulate surely win John Ireland many new friends.
Gramophone

John Lenehan plays this music as though he loves it deeply, and the recording is excellent.
Classic CD

Lenehan is especially impressive in a powerful piece like the 1928 Ballade...its jagged rhythms and sense of narrative are
graphically conveyed.
BBC Music Magazine

_Philip Glass - The Piano Music

Michael Nyman - The Piano Music

Ludovico Einaudi - The Piano Music

Three discs of minimalist piano by the genre's biggest names, performed by one of our most celebrated musicians. Given that an earlier recording of Nyman has already bagged Lenehan a Gramophone award, it is unsurprising that his disc of excerpts from"The Piano", "Wonderland" and other film soundtracks stands out in particular. He expertly teams a steady rhythmic hand with a sophisticated range of tones into which he dips like an Old Master with his palette. With Einaudi's own recordings of his piano pieces so familiar to many, it is to Lenehan's credit that he can put his own, infinitely graceful, stamp on them: he takes things a little faster, injecting a mild tension into works such as "Le Onde". The Glass disc is largely taken up with music from "The Hours" charged here with Lenehan's characteristic vitality and warmth. Savour the sound of a pianist in his element.
CLASSIC FM MAGAZINE 2007

Delicate articulations, subtle shadings, .......measured control and finely poised sensitivity.
GRAMOPHONE 2007

_Cool Piano
A box set containing all three albums from "The Piano Music" series.
SONY/BMG

_Michael Nyman - The Piano Concerto
Ulster Orchestra / Takuo Yuasa
Gramophone Award winner.
NAXOS

John Lenehan has always been the definitive Nyman pianist other than the composer himself.
GRAMOPHONE

John Lenehan, in his extremely fine account of the Piano Concerto switches between the lyric sensuousness and rhythmic propulsion required of him with fluency.
CLASSIC CD

_Erik Satie - Son Of The Stars
Debut disc originally issued by EARTHSOUNDS in 1991 and reissued in 1998 on the Classic FM/ BMG "Full works" series.

He shows a penetrating insight into this wayward composer, (Erik Satie) and brings to the music a personal sensitivity and tenderness that is at once evident in the piece that opens his recital. What follows does not disappoint..... . There are many things in Lenehan's recital that I would not want to be without, such as his moving playing of the "Réverie du Pauvre", his thoughtful account of "Je te veux", and the witty performance of "Le Piege de Meduse"
GRAMOPHONE