L'Ascension - Messiaen

Double Concerto - Gy÷rgy Ligeti

Ringed By The Flat Horizon - George Benjamin

La Valse - Ravel

What a strange coincidence. Last Friday, when the Ulster Orchestra presented its most adventurous subscription concert, the premature departure was announced of David Fisk, the chief executive who made it possible.

The programme was conducted by the composer George Benjamin, one of those rare individuals who made a mark on the international scene with works written as teenagers. Inspired by a photograph of a New Mexico thunderstorm and lines from The Waste Land, Ringed By The Flat Horizon is a remarkable achievement for someone so young: technically adroit and vividly imagined and realised.

Messiaen's early L'Ascension was heard last September in a chilly reading from the NSO. Benjamin, who studied with Messiaen, shaped these early "symphonic meditations" with rounder contours and a much warmer inner glow, and achieved a sense of timelessness without sacrificing the music's sense of direction.

Gy÷rgy Ligeti's double concerto for flute and oboe eschews the David and Goliath scenario of so many concertos in favour of a different kind of tension: microtonal deviations tug at the ear in textures that are mostly delicate, and often highly sensual, with moments that flash and fade like unexpected fireworks. The soloists sounded authoritative and discreet.

In Ravel's La Valse, Benjamin played up the composer's particularly French view of Viennese extravagance, but admitted a harsh view of the ending rather than the expected indulgent apotheosis.