Search - Brendan Mulvihill & Donna Long :: Morning Dew

Great performances, fine music

05/22/1998

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This is a thoroughly enjoyable album: two strong performers who obviously have a great rapport and whose styles complement each other well. In duos and solos, Mulvihill's fiddle and Long's piano and harpsichord offer fresh, lively interpretations of traditional tunes. Long's solo arrangements of O'Carolan melodies clearly show his relationship to eighteenth-century classical music, which isn't always evident with other instrumentation. My only major gripe is that the recording was poorly miked: there's no separation between the two instruments, so in the duos it sounds as if the violinist is standing in the middle of the piano. (Also, I find the liner notes infuriating: the writer stresses Mulvihill's "originality" while merely listing the sources from which Long learned her technique. As a traditionally trained fiddler, Mulvihill is fully as "derivative" as she is; in fact, I think she's the more innovative of the two!) A worthy addition to anyone's music library, even if you're not an Irish music fan."