...there's no gentility or emotional holding-back about these performances [of the Violin Sonatas] - the works are presented as big-boned, rough-hewn almost, in the Brahmsian tradition but infused with urgent contemporary feeling...Alice Neary's account of the later, more compact but equally heartfelt Cello Sonata is similarly powerful.

Gould and Frith have the easy, genial, improvisatory nature of the First Violin Sonata nailed. Their tone in the tragedy-edged Second has just the right contrast...Neary plays [the Cello Sonata] with sure-fingered technique and sonorous tone, her interpretation awash with intense love, longing and frustration.

The Ireland sonatas are sweet, uncomplicated and...unmistakably English. The performances are fine

With well balanced sound the disc makes a welcome addition to Naxos's growing library of British chamber works from a period too often neglected.

Lucy Gould, one of the leading British violinists of her generation, is most sympathetically accompanied by Benjamin Frith, a pianist who should be far more widely acclaimed.

In the first, D minor violin sonata...it's the slow movement – with a main idea whose falling motif is more than distantly reminiscent of the theme of Elgar's Enigma Variations – that packs an emotional punch. All three performances certainly extract as much musical juice out of the pieces as they can.

Anyone who instinctively shies away from John Ireland’s languid late romanticism might be persuaded of a more muscular side to his musical personality by these two violin sonatas, excellently played here.