Raymond Deane brings a Western European training to what would seem a distinctly Irish sensibility. The musical processes that change by degree over the course of each piece, and the subtlety of change within them, give his music its staying-power.
In Brown Studies (for string quartet), the variety of texture and dynamics forestalls any sense of the monotony that the negative associations of such a title might suggest. Deane manipulates form with an intuitive feel for momentum: the ‘Centri-fugue’ grows in a series of terraces around its primary material, while the closing section (track 4) reviews previous ideas in a dynamic metamorphosis. After-Pieces is more overtly descriptive: Deane cites Prokofiev as an influence, and ‘The Sphinx Unleashed’ resonates with the latter’s Toccata and Sarcasms while ‘The Amorous Sphinx’ channels the exuberance of early Schumann through darker waters. These are bravura studies for the present, and Hugh Tinney responds with scintillating pianism.
Deane points out that Macabre Trilogy is not intended to be played as such, yet its constituents make sense when played in sequence, the piano trio nucleus constant throughout. ‘Marche oubliee’ prefigures the quartet pieces in its free-wheeling rhythmic dislocations, while ‘Seachanges’ conceals the ‘Dies irae’ plainchant as the music’s rhythmic profile surges, then fragments. ‘Catacombs’ is the most intriguing – a series of increasingly capricious paraphrases on Mussorgsky’s ‘picture’, complete with its ‘Con mortuis in lingua morta’ tailpiece, where the skulls really do ‘glow softly from within’.
Music satisfying in its formal integrity and tonal sensitivity which, in these scrupulously prepared performances, is worth getting to know.'