Come along to the Ulster Hall, Belfast on 31 August 2022 for the sixth and final performance in this year’s series of FREE BBC Radio 3 Summer Invitation Concerts with the Ulster Orchestra.
Three soloists – all winners of international competitions – make their Ulster Hall debut, together with the dynamic young British conductor Angus Webster, and returning favourites Jessica Cottis and Jac Van Steen.
The final concert in the series is an evocative mix of music.
The Wasps was Vaughan Williams’ first foray into incidental music – written in 1909 for the Cambridge Greek Play production of Aristophanes' The Wasps at Trinity College, Cambridge. Elizabeth Maconchy’s Nocturne, composed in 1950, is stylish and charming in its night time pictures.
Tchaikovsky’s The Voyevoda (The War Leader), inspired by Adam Mickiewicz’s poetry, is full of emotional turmoil and includes the composer’s first use of the celeste – the newly-invented instrument he’d just discovered in Paris.
And finally, Dutch colour brings the series to a close with some mythical Greek comedy, in the hands of composer Alphons Diepenbrock. His Marsyas (The Magic Fountain) is based on a poem by fellow Dutchman, Balthazar Verhagen.
The Ulster Orchestra is conducted by its Honorary Principal Guest Conductor, Jac van Steen.
Vaughan Williams: Overture The Wasps – 10’
Elizabeth Maconchy: Nocturne – 7’
Tchaikovsky: The Voyevoda, Op. 78 – 11’
Diepenbrock: Music from Marsyas – 22’
Jac van Steen (conductor)
The Ulster Orchestra
