A collection of various harp musics from around the world, this album attempts to cover all major harp traditions within the space of an hour. Roughly half of the artists featured hail from the
ARC stables, with the other half being licensed work from the various labels involved. The focus is relatively more on the European end of the spectrum, but other cultures are also represented. Welsh and
Celtic harps dominate the whole of the album, providing the opening in
Robin Huw Bowen's arrangement of a piece for the Welsh triple harp. A Chinese piece follows, making the largest geographic distinction possible. The album then showcases its first bit of
Celtic harp with a piece from
Triskell. Galician music from Spain is represented by
Emilio Cao, and then the album returns to
Celtic harps, with a 30-string used by
Robin Williamson in a piece from his
Music for Macbeth album and a
folk harp used by
Golden Bough's
Margie Butler. After another Galician outing, the divine Paraguayan harp is presented by
Oscar Benito. After two runs through the realm of the
classical harp, the album moves to
Ravi, a multicultural performer using an electric kora to present a light, pensive number.
Alfredo Ortiz provides another look at the Paraguayan harp, and the album finishes on
Alan Stivell playing the Breton harp, an instrument lost since the Dark Ages and rediscovered/built by
Stivell's father. The only really notable omissions here are that of the Burmese harp, a major tradition in its own right, and perhaps a more
traditional kora performance. Despite this, though, the album puts forward some decent examples of a huge variety of harp traditions. For a multinational look at the use of a number of relatively similar instruments in entirely different contexts by masters of the various forms, this album would be a fine way to start. ~ Adam Greenberg
![The Very Best of the Pogues [2013]](http://prodimage.images-bn.com/pimages/0826663137385_p0_v3_s90x140.jpg "The Very Best of the Pogues [2013]")
