Dublin’s historic St Werburgh’s Church played host to a curious gathering of Irish musical greats on a frosty night in January 2013: fiddle player Zoë Conway, harpist Siobhan Armstrong, bodhran player Robbie Harris and an allstar chamber choir, the EQ Singers, all under the musical guidance of conductor Eamonn Dougan. And then there was Sean O Riada: the composer from Cork, who died aged only 40 in 1971, made his presence felt in spirit if not in body, for here his work was heard re-wrought, re-inspired, re-imagined - and expertly recorded for this CD.
The occasion, part of Temple Bar TradFest, was the performance of a new arrangement of O Riada’s famous Mass, composed originally for the choir that he established in Cúil Aodha, County Cork. Here O Riada’s work was respun by the, perhaps unlikely, hands of Uzbek composer Dmitri Yanov-Yanovsky. And yet as the first notes of the ‘Iontroid’ settle, it becomes apparent that the link from Tashkent to Cúil Aodha is not as incongruous as it might seem - Yanov-Yanovsky may be of a different time and place to O Riada, but his musical sensibility and sensitivity to the material resonates with the Corkman in a way that is uncanny.
Now released by Louth Contemporary Music Society, an organisation that has energised music in Ireland with its ambitious programming, O Riada Re-Imagined is an exemplar of the continuing tradition across musical history of assimilation, re-invention, tribute and reinterpretation.
And like the best adaptations, Yanov-Yanovsky’s take on O Riada’s important work succeeds in being a respectful, indeed affectionate, effort, without being tame or over-deferential. Moving swiftly from ecstatic moments of release to tender, tranquil writing, Yanov-Yanovsky expresses O Riada’s vision in an original way for a contemporary audience.
