Stravinsky: Dumbarton Oaks
Mozart: Concerto No.5 for Violin 'Turkish'
Haydn: Symphony No. 85 'La Reine'

Conductor: Sinead Hayes
Violin: Tamás Kocsis

As the first shoots of Spring start to show, this concert opens with a piece inspired by the formal gardens of a great American stately home. Photos of the beautiful music room and gardens of Dumbarton Oaks (near Washington D.C.) were sent to Stravinsky to inspire a commission from the house’s owners, Robert and Mildred Woods Bliss – ‘a cheque would have been more useful’, he grumped on receiving them – and the result is a beautiful concerto inspired by Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, but full of Stravinsky’s own unique style and flair.

Mozart wrote five violin concertos and all five were written in a nine month period in 1775 when he was just 19. Mozart was a fine violinist in his own right and several trips to Italy, where he met violin virtuosi such as Pietro Nardini, focussed his attention on writing seriously for the instrument. The fifth concerto is the pinnacle of his work for the form, full of imaginative writing that showcases the solo instrument and which features a final-movement interlude alla turca, which gives the piece its nickname, Turkish. Your soloist for the work is the Ulster Orchestra leader, Tamás Kocsis.

The concert opens with a piece commissioned by a woman nicknamed ‘the Queen of Georgetown’ and closes with reference to another Queen. Marie Antoinette is said to have declared Haydn’s Symphony No. 85 her favourite of the ‘Paris’ Symphonies, which quickly saw Haydn’s Parisian publisher add the nickname La Reine (‘The Queen’) to the work. Haydn was enticed to Paris by a commission that offered him a much larger orchestra to work with and the resulting six symphonies are among his most complex. Symphony No. 85 opens in suitably regal fashion, its second movement secured its place in Parisian hearts – not just the Queen’s – by featuring variations on the French folk song La gentile et jeune Lisette, its third movement follows Parisian musical fashion of the time and foregrounds the woodwind section before finishing with a compelling rondo finale.

Esteemed Irish Conductor Sinead Hayes makes a welcome return to the Ulster Orchestra for this beautiful Easter programme.

This concert will be available for streaming for 30 days after the initial event.