25th Anniversary Celebration

As someone unfortunately old enough to remember the worst extravagances of progressive rock and some appalling collaborations with the classical world – Deep Purple’s Concerto for Group and Orchestra, for instance – my eyes tend to glaze over when the word ‘orchestra’ appears on any traditional music album, especially when it comes to Ireland. Sure, there have been a few such associations in the past, like fiddler Charlie Lennon’s tradition–based compositions such as Island Wedding, with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra. And the Chieftains have dabbled too, most notably with the self–same grouping on The Year of the French. The benchmark for these has for some 50 years been the Mise Éire film soundtrack composed by Seán Ó Riada (reviewed in #40).

Here the Irish national broadcaster’s house band turns up acting as foil in a project commemorating the County Donegal band Altan’s silver jubilee. Unfortunately, the outcome contains more aural saccharin than a warehouse stocked with Sweet’N Low, which utterly emasculates the band’s essential drive and provides an abundance of sonic schlock, guaranteed to draw green–eyed tears from the children of Ireland’s diaspora. Mairéad sings a selection of the band’s most well– known songs, such as ‘Dónal agus Morag’ and the RTÉ orchestra provides a lush accompaniment. The band then plays a selection of its most well–known tunes and the RTÉ orchestra provides a lush accompaniment. You get the picture. Still, for all that, there’s nothing innately bad about this album and there are occasional hints of what might have transpired with greater collective imagination, most notably on the song ‘Gleanntáin Ghlas Ghaoith Dobhair, where the strings provide exhilarating contrapuntal accompaniment. But, alas, all too often it’s a case of the bland meeting the band.