Copland                       8 Emily Dickinson Songs
Stravinsky                   Orpheus
  
JAC VAN STEEN         CONDUCTOR
EMA NIKOLOVSKA     MEZZO-SOPRANO

Join us for the second installment in this year's series of free BBC Radio 3 Summer Invitation Concerts with the Ulster Orchestra.

Three soloists – all winners of international competitions – make their Ulster Hall debut, together with the dynamic young British conductor Angus Webster, and returning favourites Jessica Cottis and Jac Van Steen. 

This programme features works by two of the 20th century’s most dynamic forces – Aaron Copland in the US and Stravinsky in Russia. BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist, mezzo-soprano Ema Nikolovska, is soloist in Copland’s 8 Emily Dickinson Songs – orchestrations of earlier settings for voice and piano premiered in 1970, at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, to celebrate Stravinsky’s 70th birthday. 

Amongst her achievements, Ema won 1st Prize at the 2019 International Vocal Competition in ‘s-Hertogenbosch and the Ferrier Loveday Song Prize at Kathleen Ferrier Awards the same year.

Stravinsky’s penultimate ballet Orpheus was written towards the end of his neoclassical period: a work which begins and ends with death — first the bard’s bride, Eurydice, then himself at the hands of furious Bacchantes. Stravinsky had started it in the autumn of 1946 in response to a commission from Lincoln Kirstein, founder of the Ballet Society (later the New York City Ballet), and the choreographer George Balanchine. 

The Ulster Orchestra’s Honorary Principal Guest Conductor, Jac van Steen, conducts.