Symphony No 1 in C Major Op 21 -
Symphony No. 9 in D Minor Op 125 Choral - Beethoven
Dmitri Sitkovetsky celebrated the end of his second season as the Ulster Orchestra's principal conductor by tackling one of the monuments of the symphonic repertoire.
At his very first concert in his present post, he led a performance of Shostakovich's First Symphony which showed complete identification with the composer's style and complete assurance in conveying it to the orchestra.
In what I believe are the first Beethoven performances he has given in Belfast, however, I felt he was still in the process of defining his relationship to the composer's idiom.
Basically this was a brisk, no-nonsense Ninth which concentrated on speed and energy rather than on refinement or detail.
As a result it worked best in the famous choral finale, which was often quite rousing, though the notoriously difficult sustained high notes posed obvious problems for the Belfast Philharmonic Choir.
Their singing was nevertheless committed, and there were steady contributions from the four soloists, Rita Cullis, Zandra McMaster, Adrian Thompson and Michael George.
One would still have liked more of the finesse one naturally expects from Sitkovetsky - especially in the First Symphony, which is nowadays sometimes treated as a sort of curtain raiser but which is by no means an easy work to bring off.