classical music if…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pm-Z3NV3ilE&feature=youtube_gdata_player
I thought the third tune, “King William’s Rambles” wasn’t too bad. The guy playing the lead, on what looks like the Breukink Eagle (not sure about that though) at least manages to play with a bit of legato and some lilt, unlike the guy playing the lead in the first tune. I got the impression that if he were playing without the ensemble around him, he might do okay.
Does this take work better for you?
I fear I may be a snob. I did not enjoy that at all.
Mike
It’s still sounds stilted and wooden over all.
Just dandy! Who’s playing?
Sharon Shannon. In 1983, when she was 14 or 15.
Of course it does, silly. They’re recorders. I don’t know about stilted, but I suppose recorders would make for decent stilts, too.
Call me a bons, but I like it a lot, on it’s own terms - not trad, but trad melodies, that happen to be Irish, adapted for recorder ensemble. Some of the recorder-y effects they’re making are quite fun. And the creamy texture of the Lullaby is really wonderful. The experience of playing recorder in an ensemble like this is like becoming part of a living pipe organ, and is quite extraordinary.
All right: yer a bons. Now, what does that mean?
I have to agree w/ MTG here. While as a trad player I couldn’t listen to it long without screaming, it was still the best nonTrad setting I’ve ever heard. At least there was an attempt at an honest hommage. Seems to me the arranger might have some degree of real contact with the actual idiom itself, even. I don’t think the melodies were disposed of with the uncomprehending arm’s-length contempt I usually detect in such offerings.
It’s the reverse of a snob. 
Ah. A lickspittle, then. Daerty lad.
Most Esteemed Moderatorer and Immoderator,
Turning my traditional filter off leaves me in complete agreement with you.
They’re fine payers and the arrangement make full use of the voices. This rant started after reading the post in the flute forum about Matt Molloy and james galway.
hmmmmm…stilts…wooden, i get it! Blockflöten! 
And while we’re at it … Block Flutes my eye. Not with all those baroque curly bits. Have you ever tried stacking them up? Fuhgeddaboudit. Though maybe those square Paetzold jobbies might do better.
About the recorder ensemble playing trad Irish jigs and reels, I don’t like that sort of thing at all. They manage to suck all the rhythm and drive and energy out of the music.
I wonder about the flip side: what it sounds like, to a classical player’s ear, to hear an Irish trad player doing Classical or Baroque music. Probably the same thing, hearing all sorts of stylistic nuances which are got ‘wrong’ (that is, different).
Like this! I wonder what a lifelong Baroque player who has never heard ITM or the uilleann pipes would think upon hearing this for the first time
Know what ‘jobbies’ means where I come from?
Well, as someone with feet firmly in both camps (studied recorder to a professional level as well as lifelong folk/trad roots), I like it. And don’t forget that neither union/uilleann nor Northumbrian pipes started life as folk/trad instruments…
(Edited for typo: ‘as well lifelong’)
I love Jerry O Sullivan playing Bach!
But then again, I’m an uilleann piper.
I have had a toe in the other camp, though not a foot, and not all that firmly planted: Music Major for one year, studying Baroque Flute. But I was a trad player first, and I can’t hear with a ‘pure’ Classical/Baroque ear.
Here’s another I’ve enjoyed (Bach on the Northumbrian pipes):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxuhiPg66QI
And I’ve been playing Rameau on my border pipes!
I normally like drones but find them distracting in that. It could just be me, but I am wondering if it is something about the tune.
I can’t claim a pure-drop Baroque ear, but I found those renditions of Bach stilted in their own way.
I don’t much care for Sting’s take on John Dowland either: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQMukijlj5k.
However, it is possible to move between Baroque and trad. I think David Greenberg and friends do it well: Bach Meets Cape Breton.
Speaking of rock stars playing dowland how does this strike you?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fV35BrRn4_I&feature=youtube_gdata_player
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-mQVjikNkE&feature=youtube_gdata_player
In regard to the 1st clip I still can’t believe what used to happen at some rock concerts.