For me it's taking to get use to. As Amazing Grace & You Raise Me Up & Mo Ghile Mear are even more Impact-ful on Voice's Of Angels, for The Parting Glass this went more traditional same with Orinoco Flow. To me the style is not as higher to the next level enough. I like the raising at the finale. The reason I fell in love was The Celtic Woman Emerald/Believe version was strong maybe high in rise style. This version to me sounds like Celtic Thunder's style which is nicely for it to be different.
CaraNua on the other hand took it similar to the classic CW original one and gave it a twist. It's still CW. But the CaraNua Danny Boy, Dulaman & Voice's Of Angel's Danny Boy & Dulaman can't battle it out since there both supreme fantastic redone versions but each quite so different especially the Dulaman Lynn invented vs the new fresh Lullaby take which is perfect to be added to the CW lullaby album for a future tour.
joke To me a Celtic Woman song can't evolve unless it is more greater than the classic just take O America for an example. It's okay since You Raise Me Up has had many versions this may go the same route.
I just like the Big feeling of the first Parting Glass with the Giant Ending Better!
! Feel free to disagree we all have different tastes. I didn't like Amazing Grace & You Raise Me Up on VOA at first but it was I just needed time to take Adjust with it..Now I'd say it's beyond the original more Breathtakingly - AWWE!
Yeah, it took me a while to get used to Amazing Grace and YRMU.
I thought the VoA tour version of Amazing Grace was better than the VoA album version.
YRMU is a more difficult one to comment on for me. I like some of the CW versions of YRMU a lot more than others (the SfTH version being one of my favourites). In any event, the VoA tour version was definitely enjoyable. There were many other songs from the tour I liked even more, though!
My Review of The Parting Glass (Voices of Angels arrangement)I agree The Parting Glass scaled back the power, which (as you mentioned) is interesting, considering they added a lot of power to some of their other songs. I like that the instrumental backing in the new version doesn't overpower the singers as much. You can really appreciate the crystal clear harmony. I would have enjoyed a little more power towards the finale, but I'm still really satisfied with the new arrangement.
Another interesting thing they did with The Parting Glass (to differentiate from David Downes'' version?) was to end the chorus in a more traditional way, in a minor key instead of in an an uplifting major key.
Ending the chorus on a major key was more satisfying and achieved that bittersweet quality more effectively. But a strength of the new arrangement is the way it ends the chorus in a sad, yet hopeful way. The way the chorus closes on a subdominant and dominant chords instead of resolving to the tonic creates a bit of anticipation. The ending of the song feels less like closure than it does leave you hanging a bit, as if to say "
goodbye ... but not forever."
While I enjoy the tune of the previous arrangement a bit more, the new arrangement (like most of the songs from Voices of Angels) still achieves incredible beauty ... just in a different way.