Customer Reviews

The Piper's Call

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you like the traditional sound of the Uilleann Bagpipe, you will like this CD or Video. Liam has a style that is so quiet and unassuming that you will believe the notes come out of the chanter with no effort. Slow airs, jigs, and hornpipes are played with equal ease. There is one selection where Liam plays the tin whistle, too.

I have the video version of this CD, so watching it adds to the enjoyment. Wonderful music.

This is a truly beautiful album. Liam O'Flynn's skills need no explanation. With very few exceptions, this album is entrancing from start to finish. Some highlights are The Gold Ring, and the utterly beautiful air An Bhean Dubh na Gleanna, with a gorgeous orchestral backing scored by Mícheál ?" Súilleabháin (why can't the Irish tenors do something similar instead of that boring drawing-room schmaltz?). The strathspey selection is also beautiful. Perhaps the only shortcomings of the album are a rather boring original tune with guest Mark Knopfler, and a dearth of regulator work. One of Liam O'Flynn's strengths as a piper is his use of the regulators and aside from one or two touches, they are sorely lacking. All in all, however, this album is a must for any fan of Irish music and uillean piping in particular.

If you like "Out to Another Side", you'll love this one. It's classic Liam with his wonderful piping! Delighted I bought it!

Track 8 contains an exquisite arrangement with orchestral strings and two horns. (French Horns)If you love the horn as I do this will give you chills. However, this CD is lacking in lively ceiligh tunes which I prefer. Some of the fillers tunes are rather tame, in other words, and mainly of interest to the Irish piper. Which, on the horn track, is wonderfully plaintive.

Liam O'Flynn's piping style is a refined and stately thing, and The Piper's Call sees him with Mark Knopfler and Galacian piper, Carlos Núñez, Matt Molloy, Sean Keane, Steve Cooney and Arty McGlynn; with Micheál O'Súilleabháin and the Irish Chamber Orchestra thrown in on one track. The best tunes kick up their heels a bit,showing O'Flynn's mastery of the uilleann (Irish)pipes, wrestling with Núñez in the jig-like muineiras; or the madness of Keane's fiddle cutting across The Gold Ring. Like the uilleann pipes themselves, this album very much grows on you.