Season 2015/16 Concert Programme Opening Night: Pictures at an Exhibition Friday 18 September 2015 Ulster Hall www.ulsterorchestra.com CONCERT PROGRAMME
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THANK YOU!
A very warm thank you to all our sponsors, funders and partners who have made this concert and all the work the Ulster Orchestra does throughout the year possible MAJOR FUNDING PARTNERS Principal Funder
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The Ulster Orchestra Society gratefully acknowledges the ongoing support of its patrons, partners and contributors and looks forward to a successful and enjoyable season. Facebook and Twitter. Follow us on Join our e-mail list for regular news and updates from your favourite orchestra. Visit www.ulsterorchestra.com
ULSTER ORCHESTRA SEASON 2015/16
Opening Night: Pictures at an Exhibition Ulster Hall Friday 18 September 2015, 7.45pm Jac van Steen Conductor Chloë Hanslip Violin Dvořák The Noon-Day Witch Stravinsky Violin Concerto Interval Mussorgsky orch. Ravel Pictures at an Exhibition Free pre-concert talk at 7pm with Principal Guest Conductor Jac van Steen. All are welcome. The concert begins with the entrance of the leader. Please note that latecomers cannot be admitted to the auditorium until a convenient break in the programme. This evening’s concert will be recorded for future broadcast by BBC Radio 3.
No food or drinks in the hall
No photography or recording
No smoking
Please stifle coughs
Switch off mobiles Programmes and artists subject to change without notice. CONCERT PROGRAMME
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ABOUT THE ULSTER ORCHESTRA Chief Conductor Principal Guest Conductor Associate Conductor Artist Laureate Associate Conductor
Rafael Payare Jac van Steen Christopher Bell Sir James Galway Christopher Bell
Leader Associate Leader
Tamás Kocsis Ioana Petcu-Colan
For almost fifty years the Ulster Orchestra has been at the forefront of musical life in Northern Ireland. Founded in 1966, the Orchestra’s sixty three full-time musicians form the region’s only professional symphony orchestra. In 2014 the Ulster Orchestra appointed Rafael Payare as its Chief Conductor. Payare is a conductor in high demand amongst the world’s great orchestras and joins a distinguished line of past principal conductors including Bryden Thomson, Vernon Handley, Yan Pascal Tortelier, Dimitry Sitkovetsky, Thierry Fischer and Kenneth Montgomery.
The Ulster Orchestra gives around 40 evening and lunchtime concerts each season in its home, the Ulster Hall, and in the Belfast Waterfront. The Orchestra performs for the BBC Radio 3 invitational concert series at the Ulster Hall and in front of tens of thousands on the Titanic Slipway for the BBC’s Proms in the Park celebrations each year. In 2015 the Ulster Orchestra will give two performances as part of the Ulster Bank Belfast International Arts Festival. The Orchestra’s successful partnership with Northern Ireland Opera (now in its fourth year) will see it perform Puccini’s Turandot with an international and Irish cast and 90-strong chorus in the Grand Opera House, Belfast in October/November 2015. The Orchestra also regularly performs with the Belfast Philharmonic Choir.
With a mission to enrich the lives of people living in Northern Ireland, those visiting, and those who encounter it through international touring and regular radio and TV broadcasts with both BBC Northern Ireland and BBC Radio 3, the Orchestra strives for excellence in all it undertakes, be it regular concert performances, learning and community engagement programmes, or creative collaborations across the arts. 4
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A key aspect of the Ulster Orchestra’s work across Northern Ireland is its annual touring programme of regional concerts which bring live orchestral music to the heart of communities in Northern Ireland. In 2015/16 the Orchestra will visit Omagh, Lisburn, Ballymena, Strabane, Bangor, Derry~Londonderry and Enniskillen. As well as this, smaller ensembles run projects, workshops and chamber events throughout the region, all year round.
Learning and engagement is at the core of all that the Ulster Orchestra does. Examples of the organisation’s work range from free concert tickets for children to the awardwinning Move to the Music scheme that helps isolated elderly people in rural areas access live orchestral music; and from cross-community projects in areas of social deprivation to workshops and education programmes in schools throughout the region.
from the environment of drug abuse and crime into which they would likely otherwise be drawn. The Ulster Orchestra records regularly. 2015 saw the release of a second volume of John Knowles Paine’s Orchestral Works on Naxos. The Orchestra have also recorded work for Chandos, Hyperion, SOMM and Toccata Classics.
In June 2015, eighty P3 pupils from three primary schools from West and North Belfast performed live with the Orchestra at the Ulster Hall. The young musicians were participating in the Ulster Orchestra’s flagship Paper Orchestra project and began their musical journey two years before when they were introduced to playing string instruments using self-made papier mâché replicas. Rafael Payare is an enthusiastic advocate of the Paper Orchestra, having graduated from a similar programme in Venezuela which is credited with rescuing, through music, generations of young people in extremely impoverished circumstances CONCERT PROGRAMME
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WELCOME! We are delighted to welcome you tonight as we ‘promenade’ into our new Season 2015/16 at the Ulster Hall with Principal Guest Conductor Jac van Steen as our ‘tour guide’. We hope that you are as excited as we are about the many fine concerts that lie ahead of us in the coming nine months. During the summer the Orchestra have been busy: enjoying happy days in Enniskillen (the Happy Days Enniskillen International Beckett Festival), on stage for BBC Radio 3’s Lunchtime Concert series, accompanying eighty schoolchildren for their Paper Orchestra concert and, last Saturday, on the Titanic Slipway for the BBC Last Night of the Proms. Also during the summer period we welcomed some new players to the family: Elana Eisen, David Edmonds, William Cole, Vahan Khourdoian and Zuzanna Pyrc. The 15/16 Season also marks a milestone for Second Violin Section Leader Michael Alexander, who starts his fortieth season with the Orchestra. Next Friday, Chief Conductor Rafael Payare returns to Belfast for the beginning of his second season with the Ulster Orchestra. In all, Rafael and Jac van Steen will direct twelve evening programmes and four lunchtime concerts between them this year. Both have expressed how much they are looking forward to continuing to form a deep musical connection with concert-goers in Northern Ireland.
James Henry Ulster Advert 2013.pdf
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This Season Ulster Orchestra welcomes internationally renowned soloists from all over the world such as Vikingur Ólafsson, Alexander Gavrylyuk, Jonathan Biss, Inon Barnatan and Annelien van Wauwe, as well as classical ‘stars’ from closer to home: Colm Carey, Ailish Tynan, James Crabb and, of course, our soloist for this evening and great friend of the Orchestra, Chloë Hanslip. Our JTI Lunchtime Concerts series begins in a week and a half. Tickets for the first concert, ‘Lunchtime Cornucopia’ (Wednesday 30 September at 1.05pm) are selling fast, so be sure to book soon. Please let you friends who work in the city know about these tasty lunchtime musical treats – you can pick up a ‘menu’ in the hall this evening. May you have an enjoyable evening and a wonderful Season 2015/16!
05/09/2013
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Piano and Harpsichord tuning Repairs and servicing Piano removals French polishing Supply of piano accessories Based in Northern Ireland
James Henry P I A N O S E RV I C E S
Tel: 028 2766 4637 or 07702 123016 Email: info@jameshenrypianoservices.co.uk Web: jameshenrypianoservices.co.uk
PROGRAMME NOTES The Noon-Day Witch, Op. 108 Antonín Dvořák (1841 – 1904) Approximate Duration: 14 minutes Naughty children in nineteenth-century Europe were regularly threatened with all manner of terrifying creatures: bogeymen, trolls, Baba Yaga in Ukraine, the Kropemann in Luxemburg and the Dullahan in Ireland. The Noon-day Witch of Czech folklore belongs firmly in this company. She was brought vividly to life in a poem by the nineteenth-century Czech poet and historian Karel Erben, and equally vividly depicted in Dvořák’s symphonic poem that opens tonight’s concert. Erben’s poem tells the grim and tragic story of a harassed mother trying to get lunch ready before her husband comes home. Despite all her protestations, her young son continues to misbehave until finally she threatens him with the Noon-day Witch. Her threat falls on deaf ears; the boy continues to scream. The Witch duly appears and demands the child. The mother cries out in terror and clasps her son tightly to her. As the last noon-day bells toll, the father enters to find his unconscious wife clutching the lifeless body of their son.
father returning from work. To the sound of gentle arpeggiated violins he revives his wife, but as the music changes from major to minor, they realize with horror that their son is dead, and the Witch’s theme blasts out one last time on trumpets and trombones like an awful, braying laugh. The Noon-day Witch was one of Dvořák’s very last works for orchestra, and it was immediately popular. Leos Janáček, Dvořák’s fellow composer, friend and contemporary, found Dvořák’s setting ‘so faithful that one could actually touch that terrible shadow in those strange, limping, extraordinary and unimagined harmonic steps.’
The Music Dvořák’s symphonic poem opens with a scene of domestic bliss, though one that moves all too quickly to a more agitated section depicting the mother’s growing exasperation with her son. After the fateful summons the Witch herself appears, to the accompaniment of muted slithering strings, chromatic harmony and grotesque utterances from the bass clarinet. A mad chase ensues, as mother and Witch struggle for the child. This macabre dance only ends as the noon-day bell is heard and the Witch vanishes. In the final section, we hear the CONCERT PROGRAMME
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PROGRAMME NOTES Violin Concerto in D Major Igor Stravinsky (1882 – 1971) Approximate Duration: 22 minutes Toccata Aria I Aria II Capriccio Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto was commissioned in 1930 for the violinist Samuel Dushkin by the American philanthropist Blair Fairchild. Dushkin later recalled the early genesis of the Concerto: ‘One day when we were lunching in a restaurant, Stravinsky took out a piece of paper, wrote down a chord and asked if it could be played. I had never seen a chord with such an enormous stretch (from the E above middle C to top A), and I replied ‘No’. Stravinsky said sadly ‘Quel dommage!’ After I got home, I tried it, and, to my astonishment found that it was actually relatively easy to play, and the sound fascinated me. I telephoned Stravinsky at once with the news. When, six months later, the Concerto was finished, I understood his disappointment when I first said ‘No’. This chord, albeit in different guises, begins each of the four movements.’ The Music The titles of the movements – Toccata, Aria and Capriccio – suggest a baroque model, and indeed, the Violin Concerto is one of Stravinsky’s so-called ‘neo-classical’ works, modelled as it is on the Baroque keyboard concertos of Bach. The opening Toccata is energetic and bright, brimming over with jaunty rhythmic ideas. The first of the two Arias echoes Bach’s two-part keyboard inventions; the second is reminiscent of a sarabande from a Bach suite, with an expressive solo line floating above
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a slow succession of orchestral chords. The Capriccio recalls the mood of the opening Toccata, although its syncopated rhythms and pungent harmonies inject a rather jazzy element. Initial Reception As ever, the critics were divided over a new work from Stravinsky. After the concerto was premiered in Berlin in October 1931, the critic of the Berliner Tageblatt was enthusiastic: ‘amusing, incredibly witty music of inspired refinement, music of a thousand touches, and scored as only Stravinsky knows how.’ Herbert Peyser of the New York Times was rather less keen: ‘Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto impresses me as possibly the most wilful, insincere and meretricious score that the creator of Petrushka and Le Sacre has promulgated in years. It may be that closer acquaintance may modify the feeling of ignoble artifice and vacuity, but for this hearer at any rate, the Concerto stands in the vanguard of Stravinsky’s most regrettable aberrations.’
SOLOIST: CHLOË HANSLIP Chloë Hanslip (b. 1987) has already established herself as an artist of distinction on the international stage. Prodigiously talented, she made her BBC Proms debut in 2002 and her US concerto debut in 2003, and has performed at major venues in the UK (Royal Festival Hall, Wigmore Hall), Europe (Vienna Musikverein, Hamburg Laeiszhalle, Paris Louvre and Salle Gaveau, St Petersburg Hermitage) as well as Carnegie Hall, Metropolitan Arts Space in Tokyo and the Seoul Arts Centre. Her performances have included the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Philharmonia Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, London Philharmonic, Beethoven Orchester Bonn, Bern Symphony Orchestra, Bremen Philharmonic, City of Birmingham Symphony, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Lahti Symphony, Moscow State Symphony, Norwegian Radio, Vienna Tonkünstler Orchester, Hamburg Symfoniker, Czech National Symphony, Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI, Royal Flemish Philharmonic and the Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra. Further afield her engagements include the Cincinnati Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Houston Symphony, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony, Malaysia Philharmonic, Adelaide Symphony, Auckland Philharmonina and the Singapore Symphony Orchestra. She has collaborated with conductors such as Sir Neville Marriner, Sir Andrew Davis, Mariss Jansons, Paavo Järvi, Charles Dutoit, Michail Jurowski and Jeffrey Tate. Chloë records for Hyperion and her first release on the label featured Violin Concertos by Vieuxtemps (Royal Flemish Philharmonic Orchestra/Brabbins). Her CD of York Bowen Sonatas with Danny Driver received recommendations from Gramophone (Choice)
and The Strad and her other Hyperion recordings include Glazunov/Schoeck Concertos and Medtner Violin Sonatas. Other notable recordings included Bruch Concertos with the London Symphony Orchestra (Warner Classics) winning her the Echo Klassik Award for ‘Best Newcomer’ (2002) and ‘Young British Classical Performer’ at the Classical BRITS (2003), and a highly acclaimed recording of John Adams Violin Concerto with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra/Slatkin. Hanslip’s wide-ranging repertoire spans Concertos by Britten, Prokofiev, Beethoven, Brahms, Korngold, Shostakovich, Barber, Bernstein, Delius, Mendelssohn, Bruch, Elgar, Tchaikovsky, Walton and Sibelius as well as contemporary works by Adams, Glass, Corigliano, Nyman, Huw Watkins, Peter Maxwell Davies and Brett Dean. A committed chamber musician, she is a regular participant in Open Chamber Music at Prussia Cove and at the Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival in Finland. Her recital partners include Angela Hewitt, Danny Driver, Igor Tchetuev and Charles Owen. Highlights of the 2015-16 season include concerto performances with the Royal Philharmonic, Kristiansand Symphony, Kymi Sinfonietta, Sinfonia Lahti, Flanders Symphony, Symphony Orchestra of Milan Giuseppe Verdi, Prague Symphony, Ulster Orchestra, Bournemouth Symphony, BBC National Orchestra of Wales and in the USA she tours Florida with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra. With regular recital partner Danny Driver, she tours Ireland and the UK. Chloë studied for ten years with the Russian pedagogue Zakhar Bron. She has also worked with Christian Tetzlaff, Robert Masters, Ida Haendel, Salvatore Accardo, and Gerhard Schulz. She plays a Guarneri del Gesu 1737.
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PROGRAMME NOTES Pictures at an Exhibition Modest Mussorgsky (1829 – 1881) orchestrated by Maurice Ravel (1875 – 1937) Promenade 1. The Gnome Promenade 2. The Old Castle Promenade 3. Tuileries 4. Bydlo Promenade
5. Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks 6. Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuÿle Promenade 7. The Marketplace at Limoges 8. Catacombs 9. Baba-Yaga 10. The Great Gate of Kiev
In 1874, Mussorgsky composed a set of solo piano pieces entitled Pictures at an Exhibition. The inspiration for this vividly descriptive suite was a visit to a memorial exhibition of drawings and watercolours by his recently deceased friend, the architect and artist Victor Hartmann. ‘Pictures at an Exhibition is bubbling over, just as Boris Godunov did.’ Mussorgsky wrote to a friend, ‘Ideas, melodies, come to me of their own accord; like the roast pigeons in the story – I gorge and gorge and overeat myself. I can hardly manage to put it all down on paper fast enough.’ The work is now best known in Ravel’s masterful orchestration, first heard at the Paris Opera in October 1922.
accompanies his awkward movements with savage shrieks. The next picture, a short promenade away, brings us to Hartmann’s watercolour of an old Italian castle and a medieval troubadour serenading his beloved by moonlight. In Ravel’s orchestration, this plaintive melody is given to the alto saxophone. In Tuileries, we find a swarm of nurses and children playing and quarrelling in the Tuileries Gardens in Paris. Mussorgsky delightfully captures the plaintive intonation of children’s voices which Ravel appropriately scores for high woodwind. Bydlo is the Polish word for ‘cattle’, and here Hartmann’s sketch is of a wagon with enormous wheels drawn by a team of oxen. Mussorgsky lets us hear the wagon lumbering along to a simple peasant tune, evidently being sung by the driver. There is a long crescendo as the wagon approaches, and a diminuendo as it disappears into the distance.
The Music From the four hundred or so pictures in the original exhibition, Mussorgsky chose ten. His musical pictures are linked by a series of Promenades, the music for which represents the rather ponderous progress of the composer himself as he moves from painting to painting. As he rather laconically noted: ‘My own physiognomy peeps out all through the intermezzos.’ The first picture, The Gnome, describes a grotesque wooden toy nutcracker which Hartmann designed in 1869 for the Artists’ Club of St Petersburg’s Christmas Tree. From the same family as Tchaikovsky’s magical Nutcracker, Mussorgsky’s Gnome 10
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Hartmann made a number of costume and set designs for a ballet, Trilbi, which was performed at the Maryinsky Theatre in St Petersburg in 1871. Mussorgsky was entranced by one particular sketch which showed children from the Imperial Russian Ballet School dressed as baby chicks ‘enclosed in eggs as in suits of armour’. Hartmann’s wife was Polish, and he spent a month in 1868 at her home town not far
from Warsaw and where he sketched many figures in the Jewish district. Mussorgsky himself owned two of these drawings and in his musical sketch Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuÿle, one fellow is rich and pompous (to whom Ravel assigns low unison strings), the other is poor and excitable (with the voice, in Ravel’s orchestration, of a muted whiney trumpet). After a bustling portrait of the Marketplace in Limoges, the scene switches abruptly to the Parisian Catacombs. One of the few surviving pictures from the original exhibition is a gloomy and atmospheric painting of Hartmann, a friend and a guide exploring the old Roman catacombs in Paris. Slow mournful chords accompany their investigations, as the music gradually transforms into a variation of the Promenade theme. Here Mussorgsky writes in the score ‘Con mortuis in lingua mortua’ (with the dead in a dead language), and then, ‘Hartmann’s creative spirit leads me to the place of skulls, and calls to them and the skulls begin to glow faintly from within,’ the music drops to a ghostly whisper for this eerie vision. Baba-Yaga is a familiar figure in Ukrainian folklore: a wicked witch who lives in a little hut that stands on chicken’s feet, and who flies around with a magical mortar in which she grinds human bones – all cleverly depicted in Mussorgsky’s score. The final movement is The Great Gate of Kiev. Hartmann had designed an elaborate gateway to commemorate Tsar Alexander II’s miraculous escape from an assassination attempt in 1866, though the project was never carried out, Hartmann’s vision lives on in Mussorgsky’s wonderful music, again a variation of the Promenade theme, which follows a magnificent procession passing through the gate.
HARTMANN’S SKETCHES
The Russian architect and painter Victor Hartmann (1834-1873) was born in St Petersburg. Sadly, most of the pictures that inspired Mussorgsky are now lost, but in 1928, the Russian abstract painter Vassily Kandinsky devised a stage version of Mussorgsky’s original piano suite involving colour, light and animation. ‘In no way can this be defined as programme music,’ he wrote. ‘If it could be said to mirror anything, then this ‘anything’ would not be the paintings, but rather Mussorgsky’s own experiences, which soar far above the content of the paintings and are reproduced in a purely musical form.’
Programme notes © Stephen Strugnell AND IF YOU LIKE THIS… …why not book for The Greats: Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto (29 January 2016)? CONCERT PROGRAMME
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JAC VAN STEEN PRINCIPAL GUEST CONDUCTOR Jac van Steen made his début with Opera North in 2013, conducting Britten’s Peter Grimes. Other highlights that year were his concerts with the Philharmonia Orchestra, both on tour and at Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall, and his début with the Vienna Volksoper conducting Loriot’s Wagner’s Ring am einem Abend. Earlier this year, Jac van Steen made a very succesful début at Garsington Opera (Intermezzo). 2015/16 sees him in the UK for engagements with various British orchestras as well as the Philharmonia, including the City of Birmingham Symphony and Ulster Orchestras. He returns to Opera North for Così fan tutte and to the Vienna Volksoper with a new production of Don Giovanni.
Jac van Steen was born in The Netherlands and studied orchestra and choir conducting at the Brabants Conservatory of Music. Since participating in the BBC Conductors Seminar in 1985, he has enjoyed a very busy career, conducting the leading orchestras in The Netherlands, the UK, Switzerland and Germany. He has held the posts of Music Director and Chief Conductor of the National Ballet of The Netherlands, the orchestras of Bochum and Nuremberg, the Staatskapelle Weimar, and the Opera and Philharmonic orchestras of Dortmund, Musikkollegium Winterthur (Switzerland); and of Principal Guest Conductor for several years of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Prague Symphony Orchestra (currently since 201314) and the Ulster Orchestra (currently, since 2014).
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Jac van Steen has participated in many recordings for the BBC, as well as live broadcasts of his concerts. He has also made a substantial number of CD recordings with various orchestras on Dabringhaus & Grimm, SOMM, Bridge Records and NMC, among others. Besides his activities as a conductor, he is dedicated to teaching and is Professor of Conducting at the Royal Conservatory of Music in The Hague, where he has recently developed his brainchild: the National Masters for Orchestral Conducting (NMO) which gives young conductors the chance to work with the best Dutch orchestras. He also regularly works with the Royal Northern College of Music and Chetham’s School of Music (Manchester) as well as the Royal Academy of Music and Royal College of Music (London).
MUSIC FOR EVERY APPETITE
YOUR JTI LUNCHTIME CONCERTS MENU Wednesdays or Thursdays at 1.05pm ULSTER HALL Make lunchtimes special with nine delectable two/three course musical menus. SUPPORTED BY
ON STAGE TONIGHT 1st Violin Tamás Kocsis
Supported by the John Gault Memorial Fund
Ioana Petcu-Colan Beverley Scott * Danny McCann-Williams
Supported by Cleaver, Fulton, Rankin
Thomas Jackson + Gillian Leeming Philip Davies Jonathan Griffin John McKernan Alys Jackson Claire Thatcher Ottoline Maas 2nd Violin Michael Alexander ** Nicholas Rippon *
Supported by the Belfast Telegraph
Kevin Harrell Karen Sexton Mireia Ferrer Helen Wakelam Nigel Ireland Elana Eisen Zuzanna Pyrc Niamh McGowan Viola Ruth Bebb *
Supported by Avril & Charles Raitt-Brown
Stephen Begley + Jonathan Simmance Ralph Tartaglia Philip Walton Richard Hadwen Richard Guthrie
Supported by Sydney Johnston Financial Services
Feargal O’Dornain
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Cello John Leeming ** Morag Stewart * Sarah Shepherd + Kathryn Lowry
Supported by Dorothy Dunlop
David Edmonds Sian Hetherington
Supported by Dr John McCaffrey
Kerry Bryson Double Bass William Cole ** Gareth Hopkins * Michele Strong + Helen Glynn Ricky Matson Flute Colin Fleming **
Supported by Hilary Gault
Jennifer Sturgeon * Elizabeth Bennett * Piccolo Elizabeth Bennett * Jennifer Sturgeon * Oboe Christopher M. Blake ** Supported by Lady Bain
Colin Stark * Eugene Feild Cor Anglais Eugene Feild Clarinet Francesco Paolo Scola ** Alessandro Cirrito Andrew Roberts
ON STAGE TONIGHT E Flat/Bass Clarinet Andrew Roberts
Timpani Mark McDonald **
Alto Saxophone Kevin Hanafin
Percussion Sam Staunton **
Bassoon Vahan Khourdoian ** Paula Jimenez Quiepo Christina Marroni Contrabassoon Christina Marroni Horn Paul Klein ** Martin Wall * Jesse Durkan * Derek Parkins * Tom Kane
Supported by Ansell Industrial Lighting Endorsed by Sabian Cymbal Products
Malcolm Neale Nick Brown Tom Edwards Stephen Quigley Harp Tanya Houghton Rhian Hanson Celeste Christopher J. Blake
Trumpet Paul Young ** Bill Cooper Pamela Stainer Trombone Martin Wilson ** Neil Gallie * Bass Trombone Richard Ashmore * Tenor Tuba Neil Gallie * Tuba Stephen Irvine *
** Section Leader * Principal + Sub-Principal
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SUPPORTING YOUR ULSTER ORCHESTRA This is an exciting period in your Ulster Orchestra’s life, one in which you have a great opportunity to help determine and shape its future. With the involvement of the entire Orchestra family - players, conductors, audiences, friends and staff - we are confident that we can accomplish great things in the months and years ahead. Here are some of the many and varied ways you can support the Ulster Orchestra: act as an ambassador for the Orchestra bring someone you know to a concert volunteer at events
Get in Touch Your Ulster Orchestra wants to hear from YOU. Do you have any ideas on how else to support the Orchestra?
donate to support our learning and outreach programme
Or do you want to get involved in some of the activities mentioned above?
Keep your eyes peeled in the coming weeks to find out how you can get more involved in supporting your Ulster Orchestra, and make sure you check out our new Ulster Orchestra Patrons’ Society!
If so, contact Rachel in the Development Office on 028 9026 0495 or email rachel@ulsterorchestra.com
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SAVE THE DATE – LAUNCH OF THE ULSTER ORCHESTRA PATRONS’ SOCIETY
One of the core aims of the Ulster Orchestra is to make orchestral music accessible through a combination of live concerts, radio and television broadcasts, learning and outreach activities and our highly acclaimed recordings. Over many years our audiences and friends have played a key role in making this work possible through volunteering, advocacy, promotion and generous donations and we want the opportunity to say thank you and to ask for your help. Therefore this season, we are launching the Ulster Orchestra Patrons’ Society, a tailored programme that we believe will allow our supporters to draw closer to our work, our performances and our players, and help us to create a truly sustainable future for the organisation that we all love.
Please save the date and join us on Friday, 16th October 2016 at 6.15pm for our launch reception with Chief Conductor Rafael Payare and Chairman Sir George Bain. This will take place in the group space prior to the pre-concert talk with guest soloist Vikingur Ólafsson. We look forward to seeing you there! CONCERT PROGRAMME
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Wills & Trusts Professional Executor & Trustee Service Administration of Estates Nursing Care Issues Enduring Powers of Attorney Office of Care & Protection Matters Tax Planning
Private Client Solicitors For further information: Michael Graham m.graham@cfrlaw.co.uk
T +44 (0)28 9024 3141 www.cfrlaw.co.uk 18
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BBC/RAF
We have vacancies for talented musicians on Clarinet, Alto/Tenor Saxophone, French Horn, Bass Trombone, Percussion, Violin and Piano. You will have a rewarding, full-time career as a professional musician, travelling and playing all over the world. Minimum standard of performance Grade 8 ABRSM or above. Competitive salary of up to ÂŁ24K for qualified entrants.
recruiting now For more information, including on eligibility and conditions of entry, contact us on 0845 605 5555, or visit
www.raf.mod.uk/careers or www.raf.mod.uk/careers/jobs/musician.cfm for more information.
The RAF values every individual’s unique contribution, irrespective of race, ethnic origin, religion, gender, sexual orientation or social background. CONCERT PROGRAMME
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Caring is at the heart of our approach
Freephone:
0808 100 1314 www.fsni.info Est
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Part of The Co-operative Group
Enjoyed tonight’s performance? Why not book for more of our fantastic 15/16 Season Concerts – and save while you do?! Becoming a subscriber is easy and you only have to book for four concerts to start saving. The choice of concerts is entirely up to you and the more concerts you book for, the bigger the savings are. Subscribers are also entitled to a 10% discount off the price of JTI Lunchtime Concerts and the Popular Favourites series. You’ve started your journey tonight – keep travelling throughout the season with the Ulster Orchestra and subscribe today! Read and complete the form on the centre pages of the Ulster Orchestra Season Brochure (available in the foyer) or contact the Ulster Hall Box Office on 028 9033 4455 to book your subscription series.
HAMLET STARRING BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH MOVIE HOUSE DUBLIN ROAD 15 OCTOBER 2015 CONCERT PROGRAMME 21 BOOK NOW MOVIEHOUSE.CO.UK
ADMINISTRATION Ulster Orchestra Ulster Hall Bedford Street Belfast, BT2 7FF Ulster Orchestra Society Ltd Chairman Professor Sir George Bain Deputy Chairman Leslie Morrison Directors Philip Davies (Ulster Orchestra Players) Frances Gibson Professor Piers Hellawell Alan Hewitt Dr Fergus Keeling (BBC) Rose Kelly Fergus McIlduff Paul McBride Michael McSorley Ald. Marion Smyth (NILGA) Peter Spratt ACNI Assessor Ciaran Scullion Ulster Orchestra Staff Executive Chairman Professor Sir George Bain Senior Executive Assistant Barbara McKinley Director of Concerts & Artistic Planning Fiona McDonnell Planning Manager & Artist Liaison Daniel Aguirre Evans Librarian Paul McKinley Director of Operations Patrick McCarthy Assistant Orchestra Manager Andrew Hume
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Platform Attendants Andrew Gardener Oran Heron Director of Development Veronica Morris Development Assistant Rachel Leitch Interim Director of Marketing & Communications David Stark Marketing & Communications Manager Miriam Crozier Marketing & Communications Assistant Mairead Sullivan Director of Finance & Business Management Auveen Sands Director of Finance & Business Management (maternity cover) Anne Dorbie Assistant Accountant/IT Support Seamus Conway Principal Funder
The Ulster Orchestra gratefully acknowledges the major support from its principal funder, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.
Ulster Orchestra is registered as Ulster Orchestra Society Ltd. Reg. No. NI 14222 Reg. Charity No. XN 45445  
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TONIGHT! ULSTER ORCHESTRA AT CULTURE NIGHT Friday 18 September, 10pm Assembly Rooms, Waring St./Donegall St., Belfast We are delighted to be a part of Culture Night Belfast 2015, the day-long celebration of arts and culture in Belfast that brings over 250 free events to public spaces across the city. Earlier today, Jac van Steen demonstrated to a Culture Night audience the process of rehearsing and preparing for a concert and, if you’d like a little more music tonight, then why not join us in the Cathedral Quarter, as members of the Orchestra perform in a free ‘Culture Night Wind-Down’. www.culturenightbelfast.com
ULSTER ORCHESTRA AT BABYDAY Sunday 27 September Various times and locations in Belfast An adventure for all the family in this city-wide festival, as Belfast holds the world’s first BabyDay! Neuroscience has conclusively shown that what happens in the first three years of a baby’s life doesn’t just affect their behaviour, but actually impacts on how their brain is formed, and BabyDay is about making these experiences creative and imaginative. Members of the Ulster Orchestra will be out and about at BabyDay, playing free surprise pop-up sessions across the city. So keep an eye – and an ear – out on Sunday 27 September! www.belfastbabyday.com CONCERT PROGRAMME
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OCTOBER 2015—APRIL 2016
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