Perpetual Twilight – The Choral Scholars of University College Dublin

   in Choir & Organ (May, 2019)
Signum have made these mixed programmes a feature of their excellent catalogue. Some work better than others, of course: very eclectic programmes can sometimes be difficult for a choir to sustain. One senses the fearlessness of the UCD choral scholars and particularly of their director/arranger/composer Desmond Earley, who has shaped a sequence of traditional Irish (plus one Burns) settings with contemporary material. An Earley setting of ‘Danny Boy’, as risky an invitation to revisionism as ‘My love is like a red, red rose’, is quite beautiful, as is Eoghan Desmond’s extraordinary Oxen of the Sun, with its Joycean brio and deceptive subtlety. The scholars sing well in Irish, too, as Dublin …