Seán Ó Riada - Nomos No 1 for string orchestra: Hercules dux Ferrariae. Brian Boydell - In memoriam Mahatma Gandhi. Donnacha Dennehy - Hive (first performance). Deirdre Gribbin - Empire States. Harty - With the Wild Geese.
Sir Hubert Parry said of Schönberg: "I can stand the fellow when he's loud, it's when he's soft that he's so obscene."
With Hamilton Harty it's the other way round: in the loud passages he plugs away at his folk themes and his orchestra can sound or can be made to sound brassy, even coarse.
But the quieter passages, such as the nocturnal middle section of With the Wild Geese (1910), can be delicious.
Moving forward to 1948, Brian Boydell's Gandhi memorial piece catches the tail-end of romanticism as seen by a disillusioned 20th century. A strong piece which overworks its basic material.
Jumping forward another nine years, Ó Riada's variations show various influences, including dodecaphony, but it all works. The performance here was strangely uncommitted, an accusation that couldn't have been levelled at the other items.
Deirdre Gribbin and Donnacha Dennehy both command a formidable orchestral technique, effortlessly surrounding dense masses of soft dense brass with clouds of swirling strings and wind, and glittering percussion sprinkled on top. In the Dennehy work, commissioned for this series by BBC Radio 3 and the National Chamber Choir, textures are further clouded by the use of microtones, obliging members of the choir, used colouristically, to resort to their personal tuning forks to get their note.
But underneath the seething surface there is a steady minimalist pulse and quite basic melodic material; Deirdre Gribbin is more stylistically varied, has a real feeling for harmony and has something to say. - Dermot Gault
Ulster Youth Orchestra - Vasily Petrenko
Royal Belfast Academical Institution, Belfast
Conor Mitchell - Nails in His Eyes. Stravinsky - Firebird Suite (1919 version). Elgar - Symphony No 1.
Elgar's first symphony presents the Ulster Youth Orchestra with as formidable a challenge as any they have faced in their 11-year history. His writing is demanding in itself and his elaborate, carefully blended textures are harder to bring off than the more transparent and obviously brilliant orchestration of Stravinsky's Firebird Suite.
There were, it is true, some frayed edges in this performance, but there were also some lovely sounds, especially in the slow third movement. There were sensitive wind solos and the brass coped well with the challenges Elgar threw at them.
One would have liked a stronger tone in the upper strings at times, but the venue was not in their favour; with the Ulster Hall closed for renovations, orchestras must look elsewhere.
The school assembly hall chosen is centrally located, but it has dull acoustics and the players on the platform (woodwind and percussion) were inevitably advantaged in comparison with the strings.
At 29, Vasily Petrenko, recently appointed principal conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, is not that much older than his players. An older hand might have paced the second movement of the symphony more judiciously, but phrases were shaped firmly throughout.
Interestingly, he seemed more involved in the Elgar than in the Stravinsky.
New works have been a feature of the UYO's programmes since the start. Conor Mitchell's work gives the orchestra's percussionists plenty to do, and much of it was effective, but effects are only effective if we don't hear them simply as effects. - Dermot Gault
