Alf McCreary: The start the Ulster Orchestra's season is sent off like a rocket
The Ulster Orchestra could not have chosen a better title for the start of its 2024-25 Season in Friday night’s concert in a packed Ulster Hall than the World Premiere of Michael Gallen’s short but delightful composition ‘How To Go Off (Like a rocket)’.
This was based on a children’s story by Oscar Wilde, no less, about a "pompous” firework which wants a spectacular show, but goes off at the wrong time, makes an impression and then fades into nothingness-like Gallen’s spectacular composition itself, so lively and full of fun.
Isata Kanneh-Mason’s 2019 debut album Romance entered the UK Classical charts at No I, and she continues to make headlines not only as a member of a distinguished musical family but also as a highly-accomplished solo pianist in her own right. Her dazzling performance of Beethoven Fourth Piano Concerto, one of his sunniest and the last piece he ever played in public, drew warm and sustained applause from an appreciative audience, and rightly so.
The mood changed totally in the second half with the “Titan” Symphony one of the more accessible major introductions to the complex musical world of Gustav Mahler, and the Belfast audience was given a superb performance under the direction of the distinguished young Brazilian conductor Eduardo Strausser who is remembered for his two outstanding previous concerts with the Ulster Orchestra.
The Mahler No I Symphony is best heard live in a venue with such a great acoustic as the Ulster Hall, and the now Berlin-based Strausser, who conducted impressively without a score, was in total command from start to finish. He brought out every nuance in this massive work, and no more so than in the triumphant finale where he caught the right balance between its lyrical beauty and its monumental musical grandeur.
The Ulster Orchestra is currently searching for a top-class Principal Conductor, and Eduardo Strausser again showed his credentials for this important post, provided he is available and willing to bring this ensemble to even greater heights, following its success at this year’s Henry Wood Proms at the Royal Albert Hall.
Friday’s concert had the special atmosphere of an Opening Night , and like the first piece it really did all go off “Like a Rocket.” Happily there is much more to come, and the next concert features our own Barry Douglas playing the Shostakovich Concerto No 1 for Piano, Trumpet and Strings with local musician Niall Keatley on trumpet. It takes place on 4 October in the Ulster Hall, starting at 7.45pm