DEATH ANNOUNCEMENT
DESMOND ANDREW HAMILTON
“Des”
30 March 1947 – 9 October 2024
Ulster Orchestra principal cellist, teacher to hundreds and keeper of a cello named Bertha
The cello had a name, which Des Hamilton would share only with people he trusted: Bertha. She was made in Mirecourt around 1890, she had a small crack under the f-hole that he refused to have mended, and for thirty-one years she sat beside him at the front of the Ulster Orchestra's cello section, sounding, he said, a good deal better than he deserved.
Desmond was born in Armagh in 1947, the son of a county council surveyor and a piano teacher, and took up the cello at nine because the school happened to have a spare one. He studied at the Royal College of Music in London, came home to Belfast in 1971 and joined the Ulster Orchestra at the height of the Troubles, when playing a concert at all was an act of faith. He became principal cellist in 1978. Colleagues remember a man who rehearsed with a pencil behind his ear and a cup of tea on the floor beside his chair, and who could make a Mahler adagio sound as though it were being whispered to one person.
During a bomb alert at the Ulster Hall in 1976, the audience and players were sent out to the foyer. Des carried Bertha down the stairs, sat on the bottom step, and played the Sarabande from Bach's Second Suite until the all-clear, with a few hundred people standing in the half-dark to listen. 'It seemed better than standing around' was the only comment he ever made. He taught at Queen's University Belfast and coached youth orchestras across Ulster for decades; dozens of professional cellists trace their bow hold to his kitchen table in Malone.
He married Heather, a primary school teacher, in 1973, and they raised Ruth and Jonathan in a house in South Belfast where somebody was always practising and somebody else was always complaining. He was a lay reader at St Anne's Cathedral, an enthusiastic and terrible golfer, and the baker of the world's most stubborn soda bread. He died on 9 October 2024 at the Royal Victoria Hospital after a short illness, with Heather beside him and the Elgar concerto playing quietly in the room.
“Don't let her hear you being afraid.”