The following paragraph, on the specially commissioned Dekatriad by Raymond Deane, was ommitted for reasons of space from Michael Dervan's review of the concert by the Irish Chamber Orchestra in the National Concert Hall on April 28th, which appeared in last Thursday's issue.
Deane's Dekatriad is conceived for 13 solo strings, establishing variety by working them into various groupings, somewhat after the manner of Bach's Third Brandenburg Concerto. The music's almost obsessive motivic reiterations hark back to the manner of some of the composer's most effective early works. So also does the piece's final chordal shift, which serves to undermine any tonal expectations which might have been raised by the establishment of a recurrent anchor note. The ICO played the work with assertive vibrancy.
:quality(70)/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/SJQTLMCMMRC2PLALXUKEWWS6HU.png)