Donnacha Dennehy: Grá Agus Bás

Iarla Ó Lionáird, Dawn Upshaw, Crash Ensemble/Alan Pierson Nonesuch 7559-79772-7***

Haydn and Beethoven engaged with Irish music. Stanford wrote Irish Rhapsodies for orchestra, and an Irish Symphony – as did Sullivan, Harty and Mary Dickenson-Auner. Seóirse Bodley revisited the challenge in the 1970s, as did Gerald Barry in the early 1990s.

Donnacha Dennehy joined in in 2007 with Grá agus Bás, a treatment of Aisling Gheal for amplified sean-nós singer and ensemble, which has sounded numbingly, gut-wrenchingly loud in concert. It is altogether more palatable at the lower volumes available on CD, Iarla Ó Lionáirds voice set in clear relief against a microtonally shifting, minimalist wall of sound. The reference point in the Yeats settings of That the Night Come, written for the restrained vocal beauty of Dawn Upshaw, is more the world of ballad-like popular song, with sophisticated, finely wrought accompaniments.

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