Search - The Harp Consort :: Carolan's Harp

Good music...odd recording.

Into | everywhereandnowhere | 03/18/2005

(3 out of 5 stars)

"No question that there is some really nice music here, but this is one of the strangest recordings I've heard since the first decade of digital. At most volume levels, the quiet, ethereal music is too soft, esp. the solo harp pieces...then, once you find the optimal volume level for that music, the louder and more rambunctious music comes across uncomfortably loud.



With the resonant acoustic, and the variety of instrumental timbres and combinations involved, this may not have been an easy recording to make, but it seems the dynamic range is still unnaturally wide. If the music itself wasn't so enjoyable, my copy would probably be sitting in a used CD bin, but after a lot of "tweaking" with the volume level, I finally found one--and ONLY one--volume setting at which all of the music comes across reasonably clearly, w/o having to sit right in front of the speakers or listen on headphones; so I made a note of that level and put it in the CD booklet.



If you are a person who has a CD changer, and likes to make programs, you can forget including this one in a "mix:" virtually anything you play with it sounds MUCH too loud by comparison.



In case you're skeptical about my review, I am by no means "fussy" about recording quality. I've collected well over a thousand CD's over twenty years, and I can only recall having a similar complaint about a couple of other recordings."

Carolan's Harp

Into | 04/09/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This work is a wonderful tribute to a musical genius form the late 1600's / early 1700's. Some have called Carolan the National Composer of Ireland. The arrangements are suprerb, the recording is bright and warm and the material ( like all great art ), remains fresh and vibrant even today. The music is both unmistakeably irish / continental and baroque. If you are thinking about this work ... stop thinking and get it."

A delicate fusion of classical and folk timbres

Brianna Neal | USA | 09/30/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Turlough O'Carolan (1670-1738), a blind, itinerant harper from Baroque-era Ireland, is noted for his enduring compositions, which combine the best of continental Baroque sensibilities with the traditional music of his native land. In "O'Carolan's Harp," noted early music artist Andrew Lawrence King and his Harp Consort offer a graceful, nuanced interpretation of that fusion of elements. Sparkling metal-strung Irish harps join with violins and viols, citterns and gitterns, flutes, bagpipes and occasional drums to produce a glittering period sound tending towards the pensive or quietly mournful, but periodically erupting into bouyant joy. For this recording, The Harp Consort comprises no less than thirteen musicians, including King on harps, David Douglass on violin, Paul O'Dette on theorbo, cittern and guitar, Pedro Estevan on percussion, Belinda Sykes on shawm and bagpipes, and singers Caitriona O'Leary and Nigel Rogers. Other gentle interpretations of O'Carolan's music include Narada's compilation albums: "Celtic Treasure" I and II. For more early music by Andrew Lawrence King and The Harp Consort, try the ebulliently spicey "Spanish Dances" and "Missa Mexicana," or the modal medieval beauty of "Miracles of Notre-Dame."

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