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.

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Ulster Orchestra: Reimaginings

Ulster Hall

All the poise, elegance and grace of the Classical period is in this concert – on the surface. But each piece shows its composer in an inventive mood, pushing the boundaries of what was expected and creating something new. Prokofiev imagined how Mozart or Haydn might write in the 1920s and produced his charming First Symphony. Mozart used his Fifth Violin Concerto to play with tempo and style, creating his most brilliant, lyrical and witty writing for the instrument. And Beethoven’s First Symphony contains all the clues required to understand that this was no ordinary composer – he would take thee symphony to somewhere entirely new.

Ulster Orchestra: Classical Adventures

Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto is a virtuoso tour de force. Its scale, technical demands and emotional richness are perhaps the ultimate challenge for a pianist to master, but the challenge is worth the prize as the rippling melodies for the soloist are full of melancholy and heart-rending drama. And if Rachmaninoff’s focus is the soloist, then Bartók’s is the orchestra. His concerto ensures that every instrument gets its chance to shine in a piece that embraces vivid colours, gorgeous tunes and ends with a life-affirming, rabble-rousing burst of sheer joy.

Ulster Orchestra: A Lifetime For Music

This Easter, we invite you to join us for a concert of gentleness and reflection. Roxanna Panufnik’s Three Paths To Peace intertwines Christian, Jewish and Islamic music in an uplifting, harmonious whole, while Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending sends a solo violin soaring to stunning heights with a yearning, free-spirited song. Brahms’s beautiful, humane German Requiem is nothing less than the musical equivalent of a friend coming alongside in a time of loss to offer comfort and consolation.

Ulster Orchestra: Paths To Peace

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The Artelize Podcast: 'Amplifying What Makes Us Human'. A conversation with Zuly E. Inirio

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The Artelize Podcast and Kasper Holten - Pedefining Opera for the modern world

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Rivers and landscapes shape the course of this programme, which has its source in Spain and flows to Bohemia. The story of Falla’s Three-Cornered Hat centres around a miller, his beautiful wife and the local magistrate, and the music is packed with references to Spanish folk music. Turia is named after the Spanish river that meets the Mediterranean near Valencia, and the solo guitar shimmers and sparkles like sun on the water. From here we move further east and join another river, the Vltava, as it wends its way through Smetana’s beautiful musical depiction of his Bohemian homeland.

Ulster Orchestra: Of Rivers and Mountains

Dreams are fleeting, unpredictable and all too prone to turn to nightmare – territory ripe for the imagination of a composer to run riot! This concert starts in the hazy, half-remembered dreams of a slumbering faun in a Mediterranean forest on a sunny afternoon, before Rebecca Clarke’s Viola Sonata takes us to a night where ‘the wine of youth... is fermenting in the veins of God’. That fermentation takes things darker still and we visit the nightmarish world of obsessive desire in Berlioz’s epic, dramatic Symphonie fantastique.

Ulster Orchestra: Dreams & Visions

Composer Sam Kane takes inspiration from Irish mythology in Danu’s Rhapsody, an Irish Trad-inflected telling of the story of the transformation of Danu into the Celtic goddess of nature. Sibelius, often inspired by the mythology of his own homeland, set the Finnish Kalevala to one side to create his lushly romantic First Symphony, where beautiful melodies appear out of musical storm and tempest. Shostakovich’s Second Piano Concerto sees him finally leave the pain of Stalinist Russia behind after the dictator’s death, to write a work for his son that is full of joy, lightness and wit, with a slow movement to swoon over.

Ulster Orchestra: Rhapsody & Romance

Changes at home hit hard when viewed from abroad. For Dvořák, learning that his first love (and sister-in-law) was terminally ill back in Bohemia brought emotional anguish that was only intensified by distance. Brahms was no stranger tto emotional turmoil either, candidly writing about his struggles with depression, though his Second Symphony pushes the dark clouds away for an uplifting finale. Both composers’ struggles with dark times resulted in profoundly emotional music that is amongst the best either ever wrote.

Ulster Orchestra: Far From Home

Benjamin Britten spoke no Russian and Dmitri Shostakovich spoke no English, but they found in each other a kindred spirit, becoming firm friends, supporters of each other’s work and using a sort of broken German as a shared language. Britten’s tribute to his teacher and mentor Frank Bridge uses each variation to loosely sketch a facet of Bridge’s personality, while Shostakovich’s Ninth Symphony was not the grand artistic statement Russia expected and instead is a witty, playful and sarcastic work that inevitably led to political trouble. And we are delighted to welcome Jess Gillam to perform Glasslands by Anna Clyne, inspired by the banshee of Irish mythology.

Ulster Orchestra: Kindred Spirits

Christmas is often the time for a trip to the ballet, and this concert will take you there; albeit with a bit of a twist! In 1960, the great jazz band leader Duke Ellington and his regular collaborator Billy Strayhorn took the music (and movement titles!) of Tchaikovsky’s ballet suite The Nutcracker and made it swing. This concert’s concerto, Luck, commissioned by the Ulster Orchestra for Matilda Lloyd, starts with string and wind flurries like snowflakes, that melt into a playful, buoyant work for trumpet and orchestra that keeps jazz-inflections to the fore. The concert closes with selections from another of Tchaikovsky’s peerless compositions for the ballet, the romantic tragedy, Swan Lake.

Sugar-Plum Swing

Ulster Orchestra: Sugar-Plum Swing

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.

Ulster Orchestra: The Hero's Journey

Clara Schumann was a formidable character – a phenomenally gifted pianist, brilliant composer, editor of her husband Robert Schumann’s compositions and key supporter of Brahms, her contribution to the world of music is vast. The first half of this concert celebrates Clara herself, first in Gabriela Ortiz’s Clara, a musical telling of the story of her relationship with Robert, and then in her own Piano Concerto, a dancing, dazzling tour-de-force. The second half of the programme features two composers important to Clara, both writing with a distinctly sun-kissed, Italian flavour.

Ulster Orchestra: Always Clara

Take a step out of the every day and visit worlds of the imagination. In Ravel’s Ma mère l'oye, we look into the world of much-loved fairy tales such as Beauty and the Beast and Tom Thumb. Michael Gallen’s Bád on Alltár, which translates as ‘Boat From Beyond’, is a fusion of Irish Traditional and classical musics drawing on the Celtic idea of the ‘thin veil’ between reality and the otherworld, bringing something new and previously unimagined to change our lives. Kenneth Hesketh’s arrangement of Lili Boulanger’s Three Pieces for Piano takes us to two imagined gardens and a cheerful parade, while Debussy’s Nocturnes evocatively depict the procession of clouds across the sky, the bustle of a festival and the sea-songs of the mythical sirens, all inspired by paintings by James McNeill Whistler.

Ulster Orchestra: Distant Shores

Spectacular soundtracks have helped create some of the most iconic films of all time, performed and recorded by orchestras across the world. Re-live that experience with your own Ulster Orchestra in an unforgettable night of music from some of the greatest blockbusters of all time. From the beautiful solo violin in The Godfather theme; the emotional opening music to Pixar’s Up to the bold brass in Mission: Impossible plus other memorable masterpieces in films such as Titanic, The Avengers, James Bond and Top Gun, this concert highlights the significance of music in bringing cinema to life across adventure, heroes, love and so much more.

Ulster Orchestra: Spectacular Soundtracks

Waterfront Hall

In this concert, the timeless battle between fate and the human spirit unfolds across three powerful works. It begins with the world première of Amelia Clarkson’s The Rain Keeps Coming, a stunning new commission by the Ulster Orchestra, where the soothing rhythms of rainfall lead through cycles of renewal and reflection. Next, Beethoven’s majestic Emperor Concerto takes centre stage, its bold piano entrances and triumphant energy celebrating the resilience to rise above life’s challenges. Finally, Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4 closes the evening, vividly portraying the eternal struggle against fate and the quest for happiness. A programme that journeys through life's ups and downs, this performance promises an unforgettable exploration of strength, rebirth, and the pursuit of joy.7

Ulster Orchestra: After The Rain

The fanfares of Borodin’s Overture to Prince Igor herald both the start of the Orchestra’s new Season and a programme packed with classic tales of mythical gardens with mysterious residents, heroism, love thwarted and fulfilled, a treacherous ogre, beautiful princesses, brave princes and a magical bird with opulent feathers that will save the day.

Ulster Orchestra: Myths & Magic

The Ulster Youth Orchestra (UYO) provides high quality musical tuition, orchestral experience and performance opportunities, not otherwise available in Northern Ireland. Through its residential courses, concerts, outreach programmes and special projects, the orchestra provides young musicians with much-needed access and exposure to the very best professional tutors and the chance to study under established international conductors.

Ulster Youth Orchestra

Julie Fowlis, the acclaimed Scottish singer whose ethereal voice brought Hebridean authenticity to Disney/Pixar’s Brave, is internationally celebrated for her ability to connect traditional Gaelic song with global audiences. She joins forces with virtuoso violinist Zoë Conway from Co. Louth, known for her genre-spanning artistry and collaborations with artists such as Damien Rice, Lou Reed, Nick Cave, Riverdance, and Rodrigo y Gabriela. Guitarist John McIntyre, rooted in the musical traditions of Co. Donegal, brings a unique blend of subtlety and soul through his sensitive accompaniment and distinctive vocal style. Completing the ensemble is Éamon Doorley, founding member of Danú, whose rhythmic mastery on the bouzouki and skillful arrangements add depth and drive to this exceptional collaboration.

Belfast TradFest: Julie Fowlis, Éamon Doorley, Zoë Conway, John McIntyre with The Ulster Orchestra

Mandela Hall

Was it, or wasn’t it, an act of defiance and bitter retort to Stalin’s displeasure? Shostakovich’s life was so utterly and constantly in peril that he could never publicly declare whether his Fifth Symphony was simply ‘a Soviet artist’s reply to just criticism’ or a satirical puncturing of the dictator, deliberately hollow but dressed as adulation. But either way, it’s a phenomenal piece of music – playful, poignant and magisterial, it’s a blockbuster end to the Season. Walton’s lyrically romantic Cello Concerto sets the scene for Shostakovich’s dramatic fireworks.

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