Riverdance: A Symphonic Suite (2012) — Bill Whelan

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From the "Bill Whelan: Orchestral Works" album by RTÉ Lyric FM is "Riverdance: A Symphonic Suite". Coming from the original famous broadway show (and a personal favorite of mine), "Riverdance", this is the orchestral suite written by the original composer for it, Bill Whelan, in 2012. Riverdance originated when Bill had composed a piece for the interval of the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest, which is an international songwriting competition organised annually by the European Broadcasting Union.
Bill took this 7-minute work and blew it up into a full-length stage production and spawned a worldwide craze for Irish dancing and Celtic music, also winning him the 1997 Grammy Award for Best Musical Show Album.
Bill himself writes in the program notes:
"The idea for a Riverdance Symphonic Suite had been on my radar for some time. Over the years I had often had requests from orchestras around the world for a full-length concert piece containing the music from the show. As my original score incorporated traditional instruments, it was not always easy to assemble the various ethnic elements in countries where pipers and bodhrán players are rare! So what I have done with this new score is to present all the themes from Riverdance in a way that is playable by a full symphony orchestra anywhere in the world, without the traditional musicians. There were two principal challenges – the first was to arrange the themes and melodies as a colourful and dynamic concert piece. The second was to choose the instruments from within the conventional symphony orchestra to appropriately replace the original ethnic instruments and voices."

COMPOSER: Bill Whelan
CONDUCTOR: David Brophy
ORCHESTRA: RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra

TRACKLIST:
0:00 - I. Cloudsong
2:05 - II. Reel Around the Sun
6:15 - III. Caoineadh Cú Chulainn
10:50 - IV. The Countess Cathleen - Women of Sidhe
14:23 - V. Firedance
18:59 - VI. Slip into Spring
20:39 - VII. Macedonian Morning
23:51 - VIII. Marta's Dance - The Russian Dervish
27:11 - IX. Lift the Wings
30:51 - X. Andalucía
33:00 - XI. Cloudsong - Riverdance

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