Sugar-Plum Swing provides a memorable evening with the Ulster Orchestra
When a classical music concert is billed as ‘Sugar-Plum Swing,’ it is almost certain that Tchaikovsky’s glorious music from The Nutcracker ballet is involved, and so it proved during Friday night’s performance by the Ulster Orchestra in the Ulster Hall.
This time it was the ballet music arranged in swing-style by the great Duke Ellington and his hugely talented music arranger Billy Strayhorn.
I have always had a fascination with swing music since I was privileged years ago to hear Duke Ellington and his Band playing live in an amphitheatre a few miles north of San Francisco as the sun was setting on a glorious Californian day.
Apparently Ellington said the relationship between jazz and the classics works both ways, and the Ulster Orchestra’s full-blooded performance of excerpts from ‘The Nutcracker’ in a jazz setting was memorable – even if in some parts there seemed to be more swing than Tchaikovsky.
Certainly I am not the first person to wonder what Tchaikovsky himself would have made of it.
There was also an air of innovation and expectancy awaiting Robin Haigh’s LUCK Concerto for Trumpet and Orchestra.
This was a co-commission by the Ulster Orchestra for Matilda Lloyd whose virtuoso solo performance was backed with flair by the orchestra.
As with any new music it was difficult to assess the five-movement concerto on this early hearing, with its complex themes and surrounding philosophy, but it was certainly gripping from start to finish.
A flavour of the piece was summarised in the concert programme which stated “The composer himself describes the finale as ‘being like a Nextflix-drama version of classical music-grand but squeezed into a pop music sensibility’.” So now you know.
The second half was devoted to Tchaikovsky’s timeless classic ‘Swan Lake’ with several excellent soloists and impressive strings which unfortunately were overpowered at times by the powerful brass and percussion, but overall it worked well.
At one point the charismatic and talented young Cuban-born conductor Cosette Justo Valdes took to the podium with a microphone, which actually worked, and gave us an enlightening contextual summary of the evening’s music which, with Nutcracker, had a strong seasonal Christmas flavour.
This talk was well-received, but it was a pity however that there was not a Christmas tree in sight, with the Ulster Hall management inadequately lighting up the Mulholland Organ with only a few shafts of colour. A lack of vision perhaps?