Alf McCreary: conductor Pawel Kapula firmly in command of lively yet sensitive performance by the Ulster Orchestra

The concert opened with Charles Ives’ short piece titled The Unanswered Question, which was first published in the early 1940s. He described it as a portrait of a “cosmic landscape”, which was an ambitious undertaking for a composition lasting only six minutes. It started softly and engagingly, but at the end there were still several unanswered questions for this writer, not made any simpler by a loud trumpet playing into his right ear on the back balcony without warning.

The Irish premiere of Gavin Higgins’ Horn Concerto, written for the superb soloist Ben Goldscheider, was a remarkable experience. Higgins himself is a noted horn-player who grew up near the Forest of Dean, and this work was, in his own words, “an exploration of forests and trees and the undergrowth”.

With hints of Wagner and hunting calls, and a music evocation of the forest floor titled Mycellium Rondo, this was a considerable challenge for the conductor, soloist and players which they overcame with commendable skill. This musical forest landscape, radical and brilliant in concept, was warmly applauded even if some members of the audience may have had difficulty at times in spotting the musical wood for the trees.

In the second half we were on more familiar ground with the “Pastoral” Sixth Symphony by Beethoven, who was very much a radical in his time. The “Pastoral” fills out wonderfully the composer’s vision of a rural landscape, and Maestro Kapula was firmly in command as he guided the players in a lively yet sensitive overall performance in which there were some excellent solos from the woodwinds.

The musical emergence of light from the darkness of the storm in the “Pastoral” may be a symbol of hope for our troubled world, but the composer himself also lived in disturbing times.

Thankfully Beethoven’s genius is a still a wonderful gift that keeps on giving nearly 200 years after his passing.