Politics aside, how often do you see a whistle featured in front of a full, classical orchestra ? !
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Magnifique.mp4?_=1
Generation? C? Bb? 
Don’t often see the pipes played dressed like that either… 
The whistle performance had me casting about for a descriptive word, so I coined one by mashing two together and getting a third from the union into the bargain: Melismacrobatic.
Probably won’t catch on.
André Rieu usually has a novelty Oirish item that features a whistle. It’s not as uncommon as you may think. And its usually cringe worthy, as it is here.
Eb.
Overdone.
I was rather mystified by the wholesale upwelling of tears, but maybe that’s my cool Minnesotan reserve talking. Not that traditionalists should necessarily take mob response as a legitimizing argument - far from it. But it suggests where the money is.
Well, I was trying for something a bit more diplomatic, but Peter to the rescue.
Here’s a few more:
and the worst of the Paddywhackery:
And what, may I ask, did we do to deserve this? 
The slight flinch from the lady at 0:26 really makes it for me.
And what, may I ask, did we do to deserve this? >
The OP did ask the question, didn’t he? 
Eye of the beholder, I guess. When I saw it, I thought, Yep. Here come the waterworks, right on cue. What I didn’t expect were the numbers; I confess that I cynically wondered if I weren’t witnessing a paid claque.
Touché.
I’m not. It’s one of the great simple tunes or tune/harmony combinations… tightly shaped, powerful and loaded with further meaning by the words now effectively (before Richard appears to tell us it’s actually ‘New Britain’) synonymous with it. It’s just naturally stirring, whether or not that particular arrangement (with or without distractively hyperactive whistle) does it for you.
… as well as all the above, it isn’t a “full, classical orchestra”. It’s a concert orchestra.
It can be. For me it entirely depends on the version, the delivery, and the occasion (which makes an argument that I’m a lot more sensitive than people might think 
). Rieu used the melodic version that does it for me, but he lost me by dipping deep into the mawk-pot. But if that’s what his audience wants, then fair play. I’m not his audience.
You’ve done it now. He will be along to tell you that it is NEW BRITAIN.
The John Sheehan clip sticks in my mind as one of the first examples I was given on the web of how an Irish jig rhythm might sound (at the start) together with how it shouldn’t sound (when the orchestra comes in).
Here’s an interesting bit of delving into the subject:
Yep, I just don’t get the alternative third line we sometimes hear with oscillating arpeggio that seems to come from nowhere instead of growing from and mirroring what was already there.
I take it you’re referring to this melodic version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bp61r5W9Q-M
As in the vid, it’s reliably found most often in a church service context, whereas the other (which Rieu used) lends itself to wider secular appreciation in a way that the other can’t. It could be that what I call the “church version” is what it is, simply because its more constrained structure is thought to ensure that a congregation can better hold its unity when singing it en masse (a proposition I dispute). One is tempted to assume that the church version is the older one, but I don’t have the scholarship to take that step. Suffice it to say it’s not the version I pick whenever I’ve played the tune.
It was never part of my church’s repertory in any way, shape or form, so the first time I ever heard it was when Judy Collins’ famous setting hit the airwaves, and I was imprinted with that version forever after.
