In this sequel to their 2009 recording, Jordi Savall and Andrew Lawrence-King are joined by Frank McGuire, bodhrán (Irish frame drum) maker and player. The repertoire is a mixture of traditional Irish and Scottish folk music with some tunes published or dating from the 18th to 20th centuries. Savall has grouped them into sets, each a suite of dances and character pieces, and each performed in a single key at modern pitch.

Based on simple monophonic tunes, some are lusty, others – like Charlie Hunter’s “The Hills of Lorne” and James Scott Skinner’s gentle tribute to his wife – are hauntingly beautiful, piqued as in O’Carolan’s “Planxty Sir Ulick Burke” with unforeseen chromatic turns, then on repetition varied with improvisation involving ornaments, melodic diminution, pedals, chords, syncopation and shifts of instrumentation, tempo and dynamics. The performers ensure that the hornpipes, jigs and reels are bursting with vitality and swagger, the strathspey is measured, and the ballads, planxties and laments – like that of Nathaniel Gow – are eloquently understated.

Savall has traded the fiddle on the previous disc for a deeper-voiced, flexibly tuned lyra viol while retaining the treble viol in the outer sets. Lawrence-King alternates between two harps and a psaltery, providing a rich variety of accompaniments (subtle drones, resonant bell-like chords and nimble counterpoint) as well as solo turns. McGuire neatly underscores and complements the energy inherent in the tunes.

In the booklet Savall writes again “in praise of transmission”, this time tracing the ways in which a renewed interest in traditional folk music during the late 20th century found fresh expression in syncretic forms in which Celtic folk music was transformed à la Riverdance into something apparently “modern” and self-evidently “marketable”.