Vincent Kennedy and the RTÉ Concert Orchestra: Music of People and Place
Navona Records

Many a story attests to the impact Vincent Kennedy's music has on listeners. After a performance in Wexford, Ireland, some attendees were so moved they had one of his musical themes etched in a library's stained glass window. Elsewhere, an Irish government representative had the composer include a handwritten score of a particular work's slow movement within a time capsule for a viking ship's return journey. With the release of Music of People and Place, an encompassing overview featuring nineteen compositions, listeners everywhere can discover firsthand why his music has the effect it does. On the tenth album exclusively featuring his own music, Kennedy conducts the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, with a number of pieces elevated by the presence of uilleann pipes player Mark Redmond.

In crafting tonal, melodically rich pieces that reflect a heavy Irish folk music influence, Kennedy's pieces pull the listener into his orchestral world to be enthralled and comforted in turn. Hailing from Dublin, the composer has conducted his works throughout the world and written, among other things, a symphony, oratorio, cantatas, concertos, a children's musical, and chamber music. All of the album's tracks but two—Where the North Wind Blows and John Fitzgerald Kennedy – The Torch Still Burns Brightly—come from multi-movement symphonic works (and been given individual titles) and were written between 2005 and 2022. Variety would seem to be very much Kennedy's spice of life, given the stylistic breadth of the material. There are poignant laments as well as rousing celebrations and even ones capable of enrapturing a ten-year-old.

A spell's instantly cast when the stirring Where the North Wind Blows presents Redmond emoting plaintively against a majestic orchestral backdrop, after which A Sunny Day in Fethard-on-Sea (the piece whose melody inspired the library's stained-glass window etching) induces a goosebumps-raising swoon that'll make you want to visit the southwest County Wexford village right away. Kennedy's gentle side is well-accounted for by the beautiful Meditation on the Book of Kells, not surprisingly his most performed work. Four instrumental movements from Colmcille – Dove of Peace appear, including Trasna go Dál Riada (Over the Sea to Dál Riada), a rousing dance featuring a bounding Redmond and orchestra, An Capall Bán (The White Horse), as heartrending as it is pretty, and, presented in two versions, the chills-inducing Colmcille's Lament.

Grá (Love) proves a star turn for violinist Mia Cooper and cellist Yue Tan when they give sumptuous voice to the haunting expression, the piece the first of five (delivered in sequence and thus forming a mini-suite) from Irishmen and Irishwomen, a work memorializing the Easter Rising of 1916. Other parts from it include the spirited Raising the Flag (inspired by the image of soldier Eamon Bulfin racing to fly the Irish Republic flag on the roof of Dublin's General Post Office), the wistful Brothers to Arms (about two siblings fighting on either side, the one fighting for the Irish surviving and the other for the British dying), and tender Arbour Hill, whose Dublin cemetery is where the executed leaders of the Rising rest.

December 2023