'MY first reaction was actually negative,' says composer Raymond Deane (b.1953) when RTE Music Director Niall Doyle asked him to be artistic director for the national broadcaster's new festival of 'Living Music'. 'I didn't want to be burdened with something like this. And I could foretell all kinds of problems like people saying, "You didn't programme my music -- why didn't you?"'

'The fact is,' says Deane, 'as far as I know, none of Berio's major works has ever been performed in this country (as opposed to things like Sequenzas for single instruments). I felt that there is a real hole that needed to be filled in. And secondly, he has simply been one of my favourite composers and a huge influence on me since the mid-1960s. So for me it's been a bit like being able to invite Mahler or Debussy, or Bach even, to be able to do this.'

Deane also secured his first-choice guest ensemble, the London Sinfonietta, who, along with the London Sinfonietta Voices, the Belgian contemporary ensemble Ictus, Dublin's Crash Ensemble and Vox 21, and the RTE groups, will give some eight concerts over the three days of the festival (October 25-27). Soloists include Swedish trombonist Christian Lindberg and Italian viola player and contemporary music specialist Maurizio Barbetti. Conductors include Pierre André Valade, Zsolt Nagy, Terry Edwards and Friedrich Goldman.

A further attraction for Deane was the opportunity to programme important post-war music -- which makes up its own vital chapter of musical history -- that is otherwise scarcely programmed at all in Ireland. 'I was conscious of the need to fill gaps to a greater extent than if this were taking place in Britain, let's say, where there has been a fairly steady tradition of performing classic contemporary works. So that was another thing that I took on myself as a kind of guiding thread through the thing, that there would be gaps filled in.'

Deane has been heartened by recent signs, such as the NSOI's recent programming of music by Boulez, and believes that the situation is gradually improving. 'One thing the NSOI lacks is rehearsal time, which is something else that we're hoping to address in this festival, in that a lot of rehearsal time is being made available. Unfortunately it doesn't look as though that will necessarily become a template for extra-festival music-making.'

And after worrying about answering accusations of exclusion from his composer colleagues, in the end Deane's decisions about who to include were all governed by considerations of artistic planning. The same considerations meant that there was no room for any music by Deane himself.

'That was a deliberate decision because I wanted to stave off the accusations of my colleagues and peers -- that I was leaving them out -- by saying, "Well yes, I am leaving you out, but I'm leaving myself out as well". And in fact the only composer of my generation who's there is Gerald Barry. He's in there with Seóirse Bodley and Frederick May, and for a specific reason. There's a thread there of what I like to call the radical tradition in Irish music that we usually hear doesn't exist, that Irish composers have always been terribly conservative. But Bodley produced that totally off-the-wall piece [Configurations] in 1967. And the Frederick May piece [String Quartet], while in some ways it's fairly traditional, in other ways represents an amazingly individual approach to the kind of things that were in the air at his time, the mid-1930s -- the twelve-note system and so on -- and blending that with tonality. It's an amazing piece.'

As for the three RTE commissions, Deane believed it was best to showcase the newest talent. 'I went for three of the younger composers (Rob Canning, Andrew Hamilton and Deirdre McKay) who I regard, from limited experience of their work, as being the most promising and the most interesting. Then there's also one short piece by Donnacha Dennehy, and that's the entire Irish representation. But proportionately I think it's quite reasonable.'

But the heart of the festival programme -- which also includes works by Stockhausen, Boulez, Gubaidulina, Saariaho, Roger Marsh, Birtwistle, Kagel, Andriessen, Xenakis, Varèse, Lutoslawski and Jonathan Harvey, and the Irish premiere of Stravinsky's 1957 Agon -- will be music by Berio such as Chemins II, Requies, Laborintus II, and the trombone concerto, SOLO, with its dedicatee, Christian Lindberg. Deane says he didn't choose Lindberg, only the work. 'I didn't decide on him. I decided on that work, and he is that work. It was written for him and he plays it. So that decided itself and it just so happened that he was available. Which was wonderful because he is a whizz-kid and is very much in demand all over the world.'

That particular concert programme will also include Leopold Mozart's Trombone Concerto, thereby bringing together the first ever trombone concerto and the last major trombone concerto of the twentieth century.

The smaller ensembles will perform solo, chamber and choral works by Berio, including Sequenze Nos. 1 (flute), 3 (voice), 5 (trombone), and 7 (oboe). Berio scholar David Osmond Smith will present a number of seminars and performance/seminars in conjunction with different works and performers. And the festival's centrepiece will be a public interview with Berio himself.

'All great music is living music,' says Deane, 'but it's the idea of a living tradition which always interests me. The idea that something takes its meaning both by its relation to stuff which comes after it, and the stuff that's gone before it. Very often pieces that have a slightly ambivalent or Janus-faced relationship to tradition interest me, like the Stravinsky Agon, which was his first major piece to use a kind of equivalent of the twelve-note system. And he had waited until Schoenberg was dead before doing this.

'Berio's music engages with tradition, no matter how radical it is. There's always some kind of element in it that looks backwards as well as forwards. And that's something that most of the works in the festival have in common.'

The RTE Living Music Festival 2002 is sponsored by IMRO, the Irish Music Rights Organisation, and takes place in association with RTE Lyric FM and with the support of the Italian Cultural Institute and the British Council. All concerts are at The Helix, Dublin City University, from 25-27 October.