Seasons Greetings

[Hornspieler]

It is customary at this time to wish our friends a Happy and Prosperous 2016, but for some, the future is worrying and uncertain.
I refer in particular to The Ulster Orchestra who are in deep financial trouble and have no guarantee that they will still be in existence to celebrate their 50th Anniversary in August.

This weekend has yielded some surprises for me, which suggests that my Thread "Hornspieler and the 3 Bs" should be amended to "Hornspieler and the four Bs

I will explain why in a further post on that thread during next week.

On New Year's Eve, I received an email conveying best wishes for 2016 from a former member of the CBSO. There were two photographs attached and I quote from a section of the email's text:

.... The extremely smart and rather frightening gentleman in the pictures above looks like an orchestra manager. Could it be you?

Yes, they were indeed of me but I had never seen them before. Probably taken by some newshounds from the Belfast Telegraph when the formation of the Ulster Orchestra was announced to the citizens of Belfast and the rest of the Province of Ulster.

A little research led me to Wikipedia where I found "The History of the Ulster Orchestra from its inception to the present day.

Read it. Follow the changes over the years since August 1966 (You'll find those two photographs early in the article) and understand why I am concerned for the orchestra's future.

There is a connection between this thread and my "Hornspieler and the 3 (now 4) B's" which I will explain on that thread.

HS

[Hornspieler]

Orchestra is given rapturous welcome -
Charles Acton, music critic of the Irish Times, was at the first concert of the newly formed Ulster Orchestra.

He wrote a piece about it for the December issue of the UK monthly journal The Musical Times.

Charles sketched the background about the UO's formation, mentioning the mainly English woodwind and the "considerable number of strings from Dublin". Nearly everything was very promising - but he had some reservations about Maurice Miles and his apparent lack of zest and musical vitality.

The Manager of the new Orchestra was Donald Froud (b.1932). He had a distinguished career as a horn-player and was a post-war pupil of Aubrey Brain. He shared some of his Ulster Orchestra memories on a BBC Radio 3 message board thread on 17 October 2009, using his pseudonym of Hornspieler:
He wrote:
I can tell you something of the history of the Orchestra’s early beginnings when it started life as a chamber orchestra of some 37 players.

In 1966, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland (not to be confused with the Arts Council of Great Britain) decided that the province needed a full-time professional orchestra to replace the part-time semi-amateur City of Belfast Orchestra.

The Council appointed the incumbent, Maurice Miles, as conductor and he set off to recruit players.
The result was a collection of very different recruits, both in the degree of their expertise and experience and also their motives in joining.

There were half a dozen members of the [City of] Belfast Orchestra, some first-time young players from the UK and a large contingent from the Irish Republic. The Belfast players joined because it offered a continuation of their association with music-making in Belfast. The young recruits from the UK joined in order to get a foot into the profession and gain experience. [Of] the recruits from the Irish Republic, some … were the product of the excellent training offered by the likes of Jaroslav Vanecek [the Czech-born violin and viola pedagogue], and some … were Europeans who had been recruited by Radio Éireann …

Before the Orchestra was even finally assembled, Maurice Miles had dashed all around Ulster, offering the local authorities an introductory ‘free’ concert for the nominal sum of £25 and, needless to say, most towns took up the offer. The NI Arts Council set up an annual budget, Maurice Miles set out a repertoire of music to be performed, and all was ready to go.

Well not quite! There was no Management or Office staff to run the thing!

Knowing nothing of this, I was asked to accept the job as General Manager and arrived in Belfast in August 1966 to find that the opening concert was scheduled for the second week in September. There were 50 (yes, FIFTY) concerts booked to take place before Christmas, and not a single arrangement had been made regarding printing of tickets, posters and programmes; no programme notes, no box office arrangements, no instrument transport purchased and no bus hire to transport the Orchestra members.

My staff comprised the former secretary of the [City of] Belfast Orchestra (a wonderful help, who was able to move mountains) [Dorothea Browne], a librarian formerly with the CBO [Thomas (Tommy) Gibson], and two orchestra porters, provided by the ACNI [Martin Molloy and Sean Craughwell are listed a year or so later].
I managed to find a wages clerk and another secretary.

Well, we did it - sometimes hand-lettering publicity material only days before concerts were to take place ...

Outside of Belfast, only Londonderry (population 50,000) is really large enough to support an audience. We gave a ‘free’ concert in Larne (population 20,000) and the local Lions club organised a full house (because Larne was taking the money), but when we returned, with a very good programme, there were only 13 people in the audience. That sounds awful, but transfer that percentage of the population to London and you would attract an audience of 6,500!


The following paragraph appeared in most of the Ulster Orchestra's printed programmes that first season:
This is the inaugural season of the Ulster Orchestra – an orchestra of thirty-eight players formed by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. The object of the Council in forming the Orchestra is to bring the highest standards of music to every town in the Province. It is the first time that Ulster has had a fully professional orchestra ‘on the road’.

Please do a Google search for "ULSTER ORCHESTRA" and read the first reference, entitled "History!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulster_Orchestra#History

Will be back later .

HS