REVIEW: A GOOD crowd, mainly couples as you'd expect, gathered on Sunday evening to hear the Ulster Orchestra's programme of Valentine's Classics.
We got some decent schmaltz (Lara's theme from Dr Zhivago), some uncut romance (Khatchachurian great Adagio from Spartacus) and one or two frankly surpririsng choices.
For example, Cabaret, nicely belted out by Lucie Jones, an eleventh hour substitute for Hannah Waddingham, which is a cynical realisation that if life's a cabaret, old chum, we'd better get on with it.
But in the first half we got uncut romance with a glorious rendition of the theme which backed that 70s nautical drama, the Onedin Line.
There's sometimes a problem with music that has a double identity but not here as the strings in particular under Robert Ziegler did sterling work with that yearning, upward moving melody.
Earlier, we heard Bernstein's overture to West Side Story and that was worth it for possibly the greatest love song in twentieth century musical theatre, Somewhere.
The lyricism shone through in the playing.Joe Lindsay, who presented the concert con brio, said after the theme from Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet, that he had something in his eye. But this was the music that made me emotional.
Other gems included the overture from Lerner and Loewe's My Fair Lady, containing the delicious tune of I Could Have Danced All Night. Debussy's Au Clair de Lune shimmered and Tango por Una Cabeza lilted with good work from the orchestra's leader.
Although the sugar content of numbers such as My Heart Will Go On was high, that was after all the point on the day of wine, roses and big tunes.
Even if we didn't sing-along to Que Sera, Sera from Hitchcock's movie The Man Who Knew Too Much, by the end despite the cold outside, there was genuine warmth in the hall.
