Ulster Orchestra BBC Invitation Concerts

Ulster Hall, Belfast Fri 7.45pm, Tues 1.05pm Adm free 00-44- 370-9011227

Arrangements are the order of the day in Friday’s free BBC invitation concert with the Ulster Orchestra. And the piano lurks behind most of them.

It was for the great Nijinsky that Ravel orchestrated Schumann's Carnavalin 1914, and he made orchestral versions of two short pieces by Debussy, a Sarabande and Danse, eight years later, in 1922. The Tableaux de Voyagesby Vincent d'Indy and the Ballade by Fauré were both reworked by the composers themselves, d'Indy dispensing entirely with the piano in his 1891 orchestration of his then three-year-old Scenes of Travel, Fauré choosing to add orchestral colours to his Ballade for solo piano (a work which Liszt read at the piano and gave up, saying, "I haven't got enough fingers"). Friday's fingers will be those of Finghin Collins (left). Also in the programme, conducted by Rumon Gamba, are Stephen Gardner's The Shipyard, and Bizet's Symphony in C.

Tuesday's lunchtime concert in this French-themed series concentrates on Parisian activities from either end of the 1920s, with Pierre-André Valade conducting Ibert's Divertissement, Stravinsky's Pulcinella Suite and Milhaud's Le Boeuf sur le toit. And Collins, by the way, can be heard later in the week at St Barrahane's Church in Castletownshend, where, on Thursday evening, he plays a programme of Beethoven, Schumann, Philip Martin, Brahms and Debussy.