If you like your music complex and challenging, this disc is certainly not for you. But if there is room in your heart and your collection for a disc of lovely, charming, tender ballads sung with genuine affection, purity of tone, and total stylistic identification, you will find much to enjoy here. Blánaid Murphy is the director of the Palestrina Choir at Dublin’s St. Mary’s Pro-Cathedral, as well as the Dublin Bach Singers, and she is clearly a first-rate trainer of choruses. Both the adults and children here sing with impeccable intonation, extremely wide dynamic range, and a fabulous sense of balance and color. The individual timbres are perfectly blended—a credit also to the microphone placement—and the result is a lovely disc that can stand up to concentrated listening or equally well serve as music that might sit in the background while you read or dine, or sip a good glass of Irish Crème Liqueur.

Some of this material will be completely familiar (Danny Boy, When Irish Eyes are Smiling, etc.), some will be brand new. All are tastefully and imaginatively arranged by David Mooney. Arsis provides complete texts, but virtually no notes at all about the music (each song gets about one sentence at the beginning of its text).

Henry Fogel, FANFARE