Happy and profound The music of A J Potter - with PATRIC STANDFORD 'The National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, conducted by Robert Houlihan, have brought this fine work to life with a strong performance ...'

The two years during which the Irish composer Archibald James Potter spent at the Royal College of Music, London, as a pupil of Ralph Vaughan Williams had a powerful influence upon him that was to remain apparent throughout his very active creative life. This was the culmination of 9 years spent in the harsh régimes of English public education, first at the choir school of All Saints, Margaret Street, London, and after that at Clifton College in Bristol. After active and harrowing service in World War II, he returned to Ireland to teach and to work as a writer and broadcaster, beginning a long musical association with Irish Radio and Television that gained him the coveted Jacobs Award in 1968.

As a composer he was one of the most prolific and skilful in Ireland, turning his English education to the ingenious service of a distinctive Irish character. Not that his sound is that of Vaughan Williams, for the combination of his sheer Irishness and a technical interest in 12-note melodic (though not harmonic) structuring, made sure of that. It was mainly in the design of his broad romantic melodies, the solid movement of blocks of harmony, his enthusiasm for exploring modality and bitonality, and the ease with which folksong elements wove themselves into his musical thinking, that he seemed to inherit something of his teacher.

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