When Dmitry Sitkovetsky joined the Ulster Orchestra as music director three seasons ago, he did so for the usual complexity of reasons. But one of the things that persuaded him this was the right move was not the orchestra - which naturally he champions as being among the best in Britain - but the audience.
'There's an extraordinary intensity in the listening. The first time I experienced that I felt that here the music does matter,' said the conductor-violinist, who will be bringing his orchestra to Hong Kong for the Midsummer Classics programme next week.
'Maybe it is not despite the troubles but because of it. The value of the music is much higher than in the rest of the country, because it's something which unites, where there is no division. It's not just entertainment.' It means, Sitkovetsky said from his hotel in Belfast where he was rehearsing for Hong Kong, that promoters in Northern Ireland have a particular problem.
'It's hard for visiting orchestras. We've had many since the Waterfront Hall was finished a couple of years ago, and they just can't attract the same kind of following as Ulster's own orchestra.' It is completely the opposite situation from Hong Kong, where overseas orchestras can fill the Cultural Centre, but the Hong Kong Philharmonic - with whom Sitkovetsky has played on several occasions - simply cannot, he added.
The Ulster situation reminds him of Russia, which he left in 1977 at 22 - again for complicated reasons but including the fact that Jewish musicians were at a disadvantage - to go to the Juilliard School in New York.
'In a bad regime, music flows in spite of it, or maybe because of it.' Last week, he said, he was performing in a festival in Gstaad, Switzerland, and met a young pianist who had just visited Russia for the first time. 'He said he had never encountered such an audience before, it was the [best] he had known because they responded in very subtle ways to what was happening in the music.
