Ulster Hall, Belfast Wed 1.05pm; Fri Aug 10 7.45pm Adm free 0044-3709011227
It’s August, so it’s time for free orchestral music in Belfast. The BBC’s series of Ulster Orchestra invitation concerts at the Ulster Hall gets underway at lunchtime on Wednesday, when the orchestra’s principal conductor, JoAnn Falletta (right), conducts music from her American homeland.
The programme, the first of two exploring 20th-century American music, brings a pairing of two classics: John Adams’s Shaker Loops and Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring. There’s an evening programme on August 10th, which features Copland’s Music for the Theatre, Samuel Barber Knoxville: Summer of 1915 (with soprano Kate Royal) and Medea, and David Diamond’s Music for Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, again with Falletta conducting.
Not exactly an everyday programme, then, but one which typifies the unorthodox programming that these concerts are free to explore. The series continues on Wednesdays and Fridays right through the month.
