Ulster Orchestra: Light and shade on an illuminating night of music

By The Newsroom

Published 28th Jan 2024, 16:41 BST

Updated 28th Jan 2024, 16:41 BST

The well-known overture ‘Oberon’ by Carl Maria Von Weber was full of sparkle and light, and it has retained its charm for all those years after its London premiere in 1826 – sadly the composer died from tuberculosis a few weeks later at only 39.

The main feature of the first half was Weber’s Clarinet Concerto No 2, written in 1811 and performed on Friday night by the virtuoso clarinettist Michael Collins who was making his return to the Ulster Hall after his appearance last year, and he and the orchestra demonstrated all their considerable skills to set off this showpiece concerto at its best.

After the interval, the mood changed with the premiere of Simon Mawhinney’s Ulster Orchestra Commission, with the support of the Vaughan Williams Foundation.

Titled ‘A Pillar of Light for Haydn’ this work by the professor of composition at Queen’s University is dedicated to the memory of Hayden Roberts who died from cancer in 2020 at the age of 19.

This powerfully evocative work was written to be paired with the 104th and final Symphony written by Joseph Haydn, and is known as the ‘London’.

This was followed without a break by Haydn’s 104th Symphony itself, a natural progression which underlined the difference between ‘modern’ composition and the traditional classicism of Haydn who died in 1809, only 17 years before Weber whose music filled the first half of the Friday concert.

There is a busy week ahead for the Ulster Orchestra leader Ioana Petcu-Colan and viola section leader Wenhan Jiang who provide two performances in the On Your Doorstep programme – the first in the Armagh Market Place Theatre on Wednesday at 8pm and the second in the Alley Theatre Strabane on Friday at 7.30pm.

Then on Saturday the Ulster Orchestra will present ‘The Two of Us – the Songs of Lennon and McCartney’.

The concert in the Waterfront Hall begins at 7.45pm and is already well-booked, so any Beatles fans who want to share in this historic extravaganza will need to move quickly if they want tickets.

The next Ulster Hall concert is on February 9 featuring the orchestra’s chief conductor Danielle Rustioni and his wife, the distinguished violinist Francesca Dego, and cellist Daniel Muller-Schott who will perform Avril Coleridge-Taylor’s ‘Sussex Landscape’ and Brahms’ ‘Double Concerto for Violin and Cello’.

The second half will feature Elgar’s ageless ‘Enigma Variations’, so the concert is likely to be a sell-out.