Belfast's Waterfront Hall is stretching a point in its Celtic Circle orchestral series by including the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. But the embedded point, that there's very little in the way of orchestral visits from those foreign orchestras closest to Irish soil, is well made. The series opens tomorrow with a concert by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra under its conductor emeritus, Walter Weller (right), a one-time leader of the Vienna Philharmonic, and said to be the only living conductor featured on a bank note (in Scotland, of course). He conducts a popular programme of Smetana (the symphonic poem Vltava), Elgar (the Cello Concerto, with Boris Pergamenshikov as soloist), and Tchaikovsky (the Fourth Symphony). The remaining concerts are by the Ulster Orchestra (at the opening of the Belfast Festival in October), the National Symphony Orchestra (in February), the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic (in April), and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales (in May)
