Atlantic Edge

Now in their 21st year, the West Ocean String Quartet celebrate their anniversary with their first outing on disc since 2013’s An Indigo Sky. Focusing on the musical heritage of Ireland’s Atlantic coast, it proves to be a rapt fusion of a classical string quartet with a traditional style. Cellist Neil Martin, fiddler Séamus McGuire and violinists Niamh Crowley and Kenneth Rice can boast an ensemble signature that is as precise as it is relaxed. Especially so in arrangements by Martin, which make much of the eloquent intimacy of a long-established quartet while staying true to music rooted in landscape.

The delicately jaunty treatment of ‘Paddy Fahey’s Jig #1’ and liquid, free-flowing quality of ‘McDermott’s Reel’ evidence the quartet’s nimble way with a tune. The nuanced delicacy of the enchanting air ‘Jenny Ward’ and haunting lament ‘Slán le Máigh’ (paying homage to Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin) quietly revel in the appropriateness of the string quartet voice to the decorous language and often dark emotions on display throughout. As does Martin’s own exquisitely elegant ‘The Boy in the Glen’ (a tribute to the late uilleann piper Liam O’Flynn) and gently lyrical ‘Tobar Geal’, originally written for Donegal fiddler Liz Doherty.