Classical

Lots of the interesting rarities that make it onto disc nowdays are still largely excluded from the concert hall. Most of the works in Hyperion's much-praised Romantic Piano Concerto CD series is a case in point. Next Friday's free BBC invitation concert with the Ulster Orchestra offers one of the pieces from the Hyperion series - Arensky's Fantasia on Russian Themes - as part of a retrospective, all1899 programme. The Arensky is lined up with the Variations on a Hungarian Air by the bright young English talent, William Hurlstone, a pupil of Stanford who died in 1906 at the age of 30, and a Suite de ballet by Holst, written when The Planets weren't even twinkling in his mind's eye. To round off the evening there's Sibelius's ever-popular First Symphony. Stephen Coombs is the soloist in the Arensky and the concert is conducted by Belfast's own Kenneth Montgomery (left).