The award-winning Ulster Youth Orchestra presents its Summer Showcase Concert on 16 August 2025 at the Ulster Hall, Belfast!
Conductor: Michael Seal
Programme:
Shostakovich Symphony No.12 ‘The Year 1917’
Dvořák Othello Overture
Mussorgsky Pictures at an Exhibition (orch. Ravel)
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.
Conductor Michael Seal's in-depth knowledge of orchestras from an insider’s position (he was a violinist with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra early in his career) gives him a unique perspective and his energy and enthusiasm are infectious, building a reputation for outstanding results that are delivered with great charm. Michael has worked with many of the UK and Europe's finest orchestras and has a special bond with youth orchestras having been involved with of City Birmingham Symphony Orchestra since their foundation and he last conducted the Ulster Youth Orchestra in 2017.
"The standard was so impressive - if you closed your eyes, it would be very easy indeed to forget that you were listening to a youth orchestra."
The concert opens with Shostakovich's huge and powerful Symphony No. 12, 'The Year 1917', commissioned by the Communist Party to honour the revolution. Lenin is the main character, and each movement conveys the events and feelings of the revolution that Shostakovich himself witnessed as a young boy.
After the interval, another programmatic work, this time following Othello from Shakespeare's play of the same name.
Dvořák’s focuses on the darker side of Othello and Desdemona's love which was marred by jealousy, in the third of a trilogy of overtures called Nature, Life and Love.
To conclude the concert, one of the most well-known examples of programme music - Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, which takes the listener around a gallery of paintings. The promenade theme escorts us from one vividly described picture to another and ends with the triumphant Great Gate of Kiev.
