A gloomy Sunday ended in a warm musical glow for a slim crowd in the Southern Theatre last night. The revered Celtic music band Altan, touring in celebration of its 25 years, delivered nearly two hours of fevered dance tunes, aching ballads and courtly waltzes.
As fiddler Ciaran Tourish said, it was touch and go, given that the group had waited most of the day for a flight to Columbus and then was separated from its luggage. In fact, Ciaran Curran, left without his bouzouki, sat out all but the last selection of the first set, when the instrument was delivered along with the group's concert merchandise.
After 25 years on the road - five in the air, they joked - the five took it all in stride, performing as close to a pub gig as a band of its stature might in a concert venue.
Accordingly, the sets unfolded at a leisurely pace, mixing dance tunes and songs in equal measure, highlighting Mairead Ni Mhaonaigh's gorgeous vocals as often as her fiddle duets with Tourish.
Late in the second set, each musician took a solo spotlight, with Daithi Sproule recounting a classic outlaw folk story in song, accordionist Dermot Byrne enchanting the crowd with a minimal but elegant dance tune, and Curran and the fiddlers dazzling with technique and their instrumental lyricism.
The group said from the first that the show would be something of a career review.
Ingeniously, though, it drew most of its material from its first recording and its newest, the live 25th Anniversary Celebration, featuring the R.T.E. Concert Orchestra.
The highlights last night displayed strength in the group's material that spans its history.
Dance tunes such as Tommy Peoples scored with a popping groove, while others such as Dark Haired Lass sailed on the duel between the two fiddlers.
Mhaonaigh delivered As I Roved Out with perfect instincts for its ornamentation and deep empathy for the lyric, especially devastating lines such as, "When the fishes fly/And the seas run dry/I'll return and marry you."
She sang most of her songs in Irish Gaelic, the first language in her native Gweedore, County Donegal in the northwest of Ireland. Little of their emotion, it seemed, was lost without translation.
Altan's show was both a fine tonic for the glum weather and a perfect prelude to this week's St. Patrick's Day.
