Join BBC Radio 3 for a FREE lunchtime invitation concert with the Ulster Orchestra, at the Ulster Hall Belfast on 24 January 2025!
The programme opens with Mendelssohn’s The Fair Melusina Overture. The composer wrote it in 1834 as a birthday gift for his sister, Fanny, and it depicts a woman who bore a curse, turning her into a water sprite from the waist down every Saturday. This magical piece, opening with a burbling motif, captures and conveys something quintessentially aquatic. Despite being one of his least-known orchestral works, Mendelssohn wrote a letter to Fanny, declaring it “the best” and “most intimate” piece he had ever produced.
Beethoven wrote his Fourth Symphony some 28 years earlier. At that time he was on a roll. He'd got the Razumovsky Quartets and the Violin Concerto under his belt, and this symphony is confident and bouncing with life. It's sometimes seen as being overshadowed by the mighty symphonies Beethoven wrote on either side of it. Indeed, Robert Schumann dismissively called the Fourth Symphony "a slender Greek maiden between two Norse giants". But Hector Berlioz was nearer the mark when he said that the slow movement was the work of the Archangel Michael, and not that of a human.
The German conductor Ustina Dubitsky makes her Ulster Hall debut.
