The Macalla Suite

Composed to commemorate the centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising, Michael Rooney’s The Macalla Suite is a compendium of folk tunes in six loosely arranged movements and a finale. Performed by the Comhaltas National Folk Orchestra at London’s Barbican Hall, it subsequently toured the south of Ireland to rapturous acclaim. This live recording from Monaghan’s Garage Theatre offers a fine souvenir of a well-meaning fusion of orchestral and folk traditions. It can also boast some spirited playing by the bespoke Macalla Orchestra, featuring nearly 60 young traditional and classical players.

Despite the enthusiastic advocacy, Rooney’s string-saturated, percussion-heavy score fails to satisfy. Driven along by cliché (‘A Clash of Traditions’), saccharine sentimentality (‘A Backward Glance’) and faux drama (‘Confusion’), it becomes increasingly exhausting to listen to. Nor is it helped by some clashing, poorly integrated passages that sound, for all the wrong reasons, like a poor man’s Charles Ives. There are genuinely touching moments (the lilting ‘Lament for the Dead’) and some rousing songs (‘The Foggy Dew’ being particularly stirring) but the intrusion of applause for all 20 individual tracks renders the suite structure redundant and makes for a very disjointed experience. In truth, it is neither fish nor fowl.