Glittering light The music of Irish composer Raymond Deane, by KEITH BRAMICH Marco Polo    8.225106

Raymond Deane (born 1953 on Achill Island) is a freelance Irish composer and author based in Dublin. His poised, dramatic, modern-sounding music brings to mind fragments of glittering light. Deane quotes liberally from earlier music on this disc, which contains three reinterpretations of the traditional concerto.

Quaternion for orchestra and piano/celesta explores four different ways of combining the orchestra with the piano (replaced by celesta in the second movement). The music has moments of quiet beauty [listen -- track 4, 0:33-1:33].

Krespel's Concerto for solo violin and orchestra is a reworking of Deane's 1983 radiophonic opera Krespel, based mainly on text from Jules Barbier's libretto to Offenbach's The Tales of Hoffmann (from whose music Deane also quotes). One of Hoffmann's tales, Rat Krespel, is the story of a violin-maker and his singer-wife, their daughter and the daughter's lover.

The Oboe Concerto was written for the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland's principal oboist Matthew Manning, who gave the first performance and plays it here. Deane takes the unusual step of replacing the orchestra's first oboe with a saxophone player, freeing Manning for his solo role and the battle with an agressive orchestra [listen -- track 9, 4:25-5:37].

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Record Box is Music & Vision's regular Saturday series of shorter CD reviews