Review – Anna Handler conducts Ulster Orchestra in Beethoven 9

Programme

Brahms Academic Festival Overture
Britten Young Apollo
Beethoven Symphony No. 9

Senan Sheridan piano
Eleanor Dennis soprano
Carolyn Dobbin mezzo-soprano
Kieran Carrel tenor
Padraic Rowan bass-baritone
Ulster Orchestra

Anna Handler conductor

Review

Anna Handler’s debut as the Ulster Orchestra’s new Chief Conductor was self-assured and joyous, powered by vigour that renews your faith in humanity, or at the very least helps you keep an open mind that maybe things will turn out OK. Brahms’s rambunctious Academic Festival Overture set the mood, Britten’s Young Apollo lit up the stage, and Beethoven’s Ninth dug deep and offered something real and necessary: hope. Little wonder the near-capacity audience was still buzzing in the foyer afterwards. It was very difficult not to be.

Ulster Hall’s acoustic does a lot of work here. It’s bright and crisp; in the moment it’s forgiving. Immersion masks what analysis is scribbled down in a notebook. The first movement of Beethoven 9 was raw and disciplined: exhilarating in its drive. (Some cracking ensemble work from trumpeters Jonathan Clarke, Stephen Murphy and Tom Thornton.) Anna Handler’s intention seemed to be to tear the music from the sky. Cellos were strong and the horns, though they occasionally fell behind, were on point. Timps were loud (a terrifying intervention as directed in the score in the second movement) too. Not everything maintained this self-assured stance. The second movement scherzo saw the cellos run ahead of violins and conductor, who were otherwise in lockstep. Occasionally the movement’s riotous abandon risked losing focus, and that gratifying sense of solidity the acoustic amplifies. None of this especially mattered. The room prioritises the energy Handler brings to the podium, and that’s what people carried out with them. The heart of the performance was the third movement, where clear, sweet upper strings conveyed both release and hope in a single phrase. Handler held an invisible tension throughout it, a glimpse of the craft audiences can expect over her initial three-year tenure.

In the concluding movement, the much anticipated chorus work is then no longer about waiting for the famous tune, but seeing how Beethoven releases what he’s spent the previous three movements establishing. We were unexpectedly grateful for actual voices to pierce the abstract, make bold statements and reassert with something visceral. Eleanor Dennis, Carolyn Dobbin, Kieran Carrel, and Padraic Rowan were similarly on-point with entries and ensembles, responding to the demands of the acoustic and still maintaining a clarity of line, pointing to their experience in this space. Kudos must be paid to the assembled six-chorus supergroup who joined forces for the Ode to Joy. Their contribution highlighted the commitment of all to deliver in a short space of time (chorus had barely as much time to rehearse as a professional choir would), and also to the health of amateur singing in and around Belfast alone.

Elsewhere there were signs of Handler’s deeper attention to story, evident in the youth focus in the programming. In Britten’s Young Apollo, a glittering showpiece from 1939 that gave 18-year-old pianist Senan Sheridan an early platform, Handler leaned into the string writing, drawing a more muscular sound from the quartet passages than I’ve heard before. That worked really well. Compared with the Britten Sinfonia’s more pared-back string orchestra sound at the Norfolk and Norwich Festival in May, the beefier strings brought out the originality of Britten’s language, especially in the basses. That ‘bruised arm’ interval created by the basses towards the end of the work resonated in the acoustic with bigger forces. In this way, the acoustic was helping Handler draw more out of a short score. Pianist Sheridan was at ease on stage, placing rippling runs and arpeggios with compass-point precision. His tall square frame, eager smile and self-confident poise contributed as much to this colourful little delight as the score itself.

Sometimes the story was clearest in what happened around the music. For the encore, Handler joined Sheridan at the piano for The Fairy Garden from Ravel’s Mother Goose, in its original duet form. Sheridan seemed older than his 18 years; Handler is only 12 years older than him. Here were people much younger than me helping each other find their feet on a new platform. I found that reassuring: an orchestra where the person in charge sits down beside the newcomer makes for a story that cuts through the usual generic output that documents classical music in the UK.

Therein lies the Ulster Orchestra’s biggest opportunity. It has an interesting story to tell that only a handful of other similarly stretched organisations are daring to tell about themselves. In appointing Handler, the Ulster Orchestra positions itself as champion, advocate and enabler of developing musicians. That it’s able to do that is partly down to its geography. That same geography significantly reduces its reach to tell its story to the people who need to hear it. Thus, this new appointment, with all of its evident new impetus, is an opportunity that is Handler’s to lose, and a story the orchestra’s to miss.

The evening challenged an assumption: that new audiences are built the same way everywhere. In Belfast, people stopped each other in the aisles to say hello. They arrived in the auditorium during the pre-concert talk, half an hour before the concert started. Afterwards, they stayed in the foyer to talk: an audience coming for community and for music. The Southbank Centre’s strategy for building new audiences won’t suit an orchestra on an island where audiences behave differently, need different things and have different appetites. To borrow the phrase the OAE owned twenty years ago: not all audiences are the same. The critical challenge for the Ulster Orchestra will be getting credit for spotting talent early. That means getting the right people with the most influential voices in the room. That’s far more than warm words and over-used adjectives. Getting this interesting story beyond Northern Ireland, where it needs to be, demands a strategic commitment to UK-wide and international messaging. On the basis of its season opener’s performances, the Ulster Orchestra’s new appointment makes for a fascinating story to follow. Actions don’t speak louder than words.