Name: Ulster Orchestra: The Hero's Journey
Start: 2025-11-21T19:45:00
Location: Ulster Hall

Alena Baeva

Gabriel Bebeșelea

Ulster Hall

The past meets the future in bold, unexpected ways. Stravinsky’s Pulcinella transforms the elegance of Baroque music into something sharp, witty, and rhythmically alive, a playful homage viewed through a modern lens. Then, experience the grandeur of Schubert’s Great C Major Symphony, a sweeping, lyrical masterpiece that bridges the Classical and Romantic worlds. Together, these works celebrate tradition not by preserving it, but by reinventing it. Two composers, a century apart, united in their fearless reinvention of tradition.

Ulster Orchestra: Reimaginings

Heroes are dangerous – they can inspire us to great things, or, if they stumble, shatter our illusions. Elysium by Samy Moussa finds us in the everlasting paradise where heroes dwell; majestic, virtuous and ecstatically triumphant. Beethoven’s Third Symphony lost its original dedication when Napoleon turned from hero to villain and the epigraph simply became ‘Heroic... dedicated to the memory of a great man’; this extraordinary, revolutionary symphony makes a hero of Beethoven himself. Dvořák’s Violin Concerto was not written for a hero so much as a friend and collaborator in Joseph Joachim and it is bursting with Czech folk music influences, especially in its skirling, dancing final movement.