Alf McCreary: Belfast Philharmonic Choir celebrates 150th season with memorable gala concert
The Belfast Philharmonic Choir celebrated its 150th season with a memorable gala final concert in the Ulster Hall on Saturday, followed by an afternoon concert yesterday in St Michael’s Church Enniskillen, with the Fermanagh Choral Society.
The Phil has been one of the mainstays on the musical scene locally and elsewhere, and Saturday ‘s performance in the Ulster Hall was a reminder of the wide range and almost invariably high musical skills of this large choir with people from many different backgrounds.
Under its distinguished chorus director (and compere) James Grossmith, and the consummate accompanist Gail Evans, with the Youth Choirs and an Ulster Orchestra Chamber group, the programme included musical landmarks reprising special anniversary commissions including the remarkable piece The Seven Heavens by James Whitbourn to celebrate the life of CS Lewis.
Another landmark feature to mark the 150th was the world premiere of an excellent new work, The Offing, by composer Elaine Agnew and poet Sinead Morrissey, tracing musically the Lagan from its source to the sea.
As the concert unfolded, there were many memories of The Phil which was established from the Classical Harmonists and the Belfast Musical Society. Its tactless first conductor Henry Stiehl from Lubeck told the new choir, “You are a hopeless band” – but they have proved him wrong ever since.
In 1877 a lady wrote to the News Letter complaining that only three-quarters of the 21 concert items had been performed when she left the Ulster Hall at 10.30pm and discovered “a crowd of wet, dirty ragamuffins tormenting everyone for liberty to call up carriages.”
Over the years The Phil attracted many eminent guests including Fritz Kreisler, and Sir Henry Wood and Sir Edward Elgar who directed The Dream of Gerontius. Sir Hamilton Harty was an honorary patron.
The Phil had influence outside the concert hall, and in my history of the Ulster Orchestra I recall how the Heysham Boat delayed its departure from Belfast to help a lead singer from The Messiah to get back to London.
Over the years The Phil has written its own story into the hearts of music lovers locally and further afield, and its 150th anniversary has been well worth celebrating.
Meanwhile full marks to the BBC and the Ulster Orchestra for its invitation concert on Thursday, with the peerless Michael Seale directing a moving performance of Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a theme of Thomas Tallis, and also Malcolm Arnold’s searing Sixth Symphony in which he bared his tortured soul but also with a riff of Charlie Parker’s jazz.
Within two days these were remarkable concerts by two of the finest ensembles of their kind in these islands.
Alf McCreary’s book “Unfinished Symphony-the Story of the Ulster Orchestra” is published in hardback and softback by the Ulster Orchestra Foundation at £12 and £20.