Review: Donal Lunny, Liam O’Flynn, Andy Irvine & Paddy Glackin - Glasgow Royal Concert Hall

DESPITE boasting musical pedigrees including Planxty and the Bothy Band, not to mention their individual superstar status in the Irish folk firmament, Messrs Lunny, O’Flynn, Irvine and Glackin by no means lent on their reputations in this artful and good-humoured reunion.

This was tried and tested material, but delivered with freshness and admirable unity, O’Flynn’s uillean pipes and Glackin’s fiddle bubbling and flowing over the fretwork of assorted bouzoukis, mandolins and guitars in a distinctively Planxty-ish sound.

Apart from the jigs, reels and flings, Irvine’s songs, too, tended to be old favourites, his reedy tones as wistful as ever in As I Roved Out and, of course, Sergeant MacBride.

It wasn’t just a rare night for nostalgists, however, and Lunny and company had a hard act to follow in piper Fred Morrison’s spirited Uist-Nashville collaboration, Outlands, with Morrison and regular sidemen Matheu Watson on guitar and bodran ace Martin O’Neill joined by American players Ron Block on banjo and Tim O’Brien on mandolin.

Cranking up the warp factors to dizzying levels on Highland, reel and uilleann pipes, with some mellow interludes on whistle, Morrison led a sort of amiable Gaelic West vs Wild West fixture.

Generally, the Gaels had the upper hand until, in the signature Outlands, Block and O’Brien broke out with some bright soloing – a spark of bluegrass, although the heather was already decidedly on fire.

RATING: ****