Alf McCreary: Ulster Orchestra ends season with a spirited finale on a night of reflection
The Ulster Orchestra ended its 2025/26 season memorably with music by Ralph Vaughan Williams, Richard Strauss and Edward Elgar, in a well-filled Ulster Hall on Friday evening.
There was a return for the orchestra’s honorary principal guest conductor Jac van Steen, who is always welcome here, and he led with a spirited interpretation of The Wasps Overture by Vaughan Williams, which made a lively start to the concert.
The Der Rosenkavalier Suite by Strauss is an orchestral showpiece which inspired some fine individual and collective performances, and deservedly drew sustained applause from the enthusiastic audience.
The mood changed in the second half with Elgar’s long and epic Violin concerto, which is a test of stamina as well as requiring a high degree of skill from everyone involved. Again, the orchestra rose to the occasion, and conductor Jac van Steen and soloist Anthony Marwood combined sensitively, particularly in the wonderful cadenza in the final movement, to produce a stirring but also reflective ending to another season of music-making.
The music apart, this was an evening for much reflection. The concert programme carried tributes to two important figures who passed on this year – the popular and long-serving former timpanist David Openshaw MBE who was with the Orchestra from 1972-2012 and who died in January, as well as Professor Sir Desmond Rea, chairman from 2008 to 2011, who died just over a week ago.
There was mention also of two retiring orchestra stalwarts – violinist Kevin Harrell, a member since 1988, and principal horn Derek Parkins, who joined as 4th horn in 1982, and also finance manager Seamus Conway, who has been part of the administration team since 1996.
There was also a tribute to Leslie Morrison, a member of the board since 2014 and the current chairman who retires later this month. It was also fitting that the concert was attended by a former chairman, Professor Sir George Bain, who with Leslie Morrison and others, did so much to save the orchestra from financial meltdown not so long ago.
Happily the Ulster Orchestra is now in a much better place, and thoughts are already concentrating on its upcoming 60th anniversary season under the direction of its exciting new chief conductor, Anna Handler, which begins in the Ulster Hall on Friday 25th September with Beethoven’s mighty Ninth Choral Symphony to mark the 200th anniversary of the composer’s death.