An Irish Viola/Vióla Gaelach

Novelty in a musical tradition as ancient as Ireland’s is not easily come by. But this unexpected pairing of viola and guitar is winningly argued for by Séamus McGuire and Steve Cooney.

Best known as a fiddler, Sligo-born, Donegal-adopted McGuire takes to the viola’s keening, baritone voice with virtuosic ease. The instrument eloquently inhabits the mellow plangency that flows through much of Irish music, bringing burnished beauty to the intimate reveries of ‘An Buachaill Caol Dubh’ and McGuire’s self-penned ‘The Dreamer’s Reel’. There’s a lilting wit to the simmering ‘The Crabs in the Skillet’, and introspective, sweet-sour weight to the Napoleonic-era ‘The Bonnie Bunch of Roses’. Depicting an encounter between a blackbird and a thrush, the unhurried ‘An Londubh is an Chéirseach’ is a bewitching pastoral idyll, McGuire and Cooney playing, as throughout, with fluent phrasing and consummately elegant concern for evoking mood. There’s a delightful playfulness to O’Carolan’s hornpipe masquerading as a march, ‘Madame Maxwell’, and a spry immediacy to ‘Paddy Fahey’s Reels’, Cooney’s guitar a discretely buoyant companion to McGuire’s rustic viola. Fleeting, dispersed hints of Appalachia offer tangy signposts to a world elsewhere, while the viola’s classical inheritance is heard in the dancing echo of Bach in ‘An Buachaill Dreoite’. Exquisite balm for these isolated times.