Natalie Clein (cello),

UO/PAUL WATKINS Ulster Hall, Belfast Fri 7.45pm £8-£20 048-90239955 NIKOLAI DEMIDENKO (PIANO), RTÉ NSO/ARILD REMMEREIT NCH, Dublin Fri 8pm €10-€35 01-4170000

If great minds think alike and fools seldom differ, the same, it seems, can also be said for the orchestral planners working at the Ulster Orchestra and the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra. The musical world is this year celebrating the bicentenary of the birth of Robert Schumann, and there’s a Schumann concerto on offer from each of the orchestras tonight.

The planners, however, didn’t land on exactly the same concerto. The Ulster Orchestra offers the Cello Concerto with Natalie Clein, and the orchestra will play under its new principal guest conductor Paul Watkins, who is himself also a cellist. The NSO has Nikolai Demidenko in the Piano Concerto under Arild Remmereit. The Belfast audience have an all-German programme (with Beethoven’s Leonore No 1 Overture and Brahms’s First Symphony). The repertoire in Dublin is more mixed, with a German first half (adding Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture to the Schumann) and a French second half (Debussy’s La mer and Ravel’s Bolero).