TURLOUGH O'Carolan (also known as Carolan) that gifted renegade from the old Irish Order, who survived as a harpist/composer until the early part of the I 8th century by blending his traditional Irish heritage with the popular baroque music of the day, made some heart wrenchingly beautiful music. And so it is that every year for the past 19, a select horde has sought out the village of Keadue in a forgotten corner of north Roscommon, for the O'Carolan Festival, inaugurated in memory of the blind harpist who learned his craft there at the behest of the local grandees, the McDermott Roes.
On Saturday night two of the most distinguished of today's O'Carolan interpreters, Maire Ni Chathasaigh (harp) and Chris Newman (guitar), performed in Keadue parish church. Although on their CD The Carolan Albums, they stick to playing O'Carolan classics straight, in performance they choose from among the most poignant and irregular of his tunes, Eleanor Plunkett's, beautiful either in the icy perfection of Ni Chathasaigh's harp, falling like shards of glass through the stillness of the church, or in duet with Newman's jazzy guitar towards the end.
They complemented this with O'Carolan's Farewell to Music on solo harp, a traditional Irish lament with no baroque influences; whether it really was O'Carolan's last composition or not is unclear, but the keening sorrow in it borrows from the sean nos voice in its inconsolable intensity.
But their virtuosity leads them on. Ni Chathasaigh chomps on the bit of the harp's respectability, and plays storming jigs like The Rambling Pitchfork and reels like Sean Dwyers and The Spike Island Lasses. Her technique is fascinating, the furious picking of the melody with the right, and the judicious layering of counterpoint with the left, finishing with a dramatic embrace of the strings to stop the resonance.
Newman glories, in the possibilities of his guitar, for percussion, for accompaniment, for melody; pushing a James Scott Skinner Scottish reel for all it's worth, it begins to sound like bluegrass, with the harp like an out size mandolin. Next they are into genuine bluegrass (Salt Creek), in jazz, where Newman's guitar is always leading him, on numbers like his own, Stroll On, on which his guitar seems to take the part of a double bass, against the sax of Ni Chathasaigh's harp.
