Soaring Spirits

One of the great masterworks, Elgar’s Cello Concerto is a wistful, beautiful piece that falls towards the end of his composing career, when he wondered if he had any musical relevance, and there’s a sense of solitude – even loneliness – that haunts this work. Elsewhere, the Ulster Orchestra brass take to the skies, first in the sun chariot of the Greek God Helios in Saint-Saëns’s Phaeton Overture and then as a flock of whooper swans in that famou...