With the Tall Ships in town for the weekend, it was entirely appropriate that the Ulster Orchestra last night played the Stephen Gardner composition The Shipyard.

Gardener is the grandson of a former riveter and a former docker and his piece, which was commissioned in 2002 for the Belfast Festival at Queen’s, evoked all the urgency ,complexity and cacophony of Harland & Wolff in the heyday of the shipyards.

The considerable technical demands were more than met by the orchestra and impressive young Irish pianist Finghin Collins, who also demonstrated his considerable versatility-following a lyrical and polished performance of Faure’s Ballad Opus 19 in the first half of the programme.

The Ulster Orchestra has been attracting large audiences to its current Summer Invitation Concerts which have been focusing on French music. Some of it is relatively unknown — including D’Indy’s Tableaux des Voyages which last night sounded engaging rather than memorable.

Conductor Rumon Gamba, who is no stranger to Belfast audiences, also guided the orchestra with panache through Debussy’s Sarabande et Danse, which was orchestrated by Ravel.

The evening’s ‘piece de resistance’ was Bizet’s wonderfully warm and sparkling Symphony in C which, inexplicably, lay neglected for nearly 60 years before it was first played in 1935.

Last night’s performance evoked all the bliss of forgotten French sunshine on a soggy Belfast summer evening.

(The next free BBC Invitation Concert is on Tuesday at 1.05pm in the Ulster Hall.)

Alf McCreary