COUNTING THE BEAT

I went to Auckland Philharmonic Orchestra tonight at the Town Hall.

There was lots of this:

None of this:

And unfortunately none of this:

but it was a wonderful concert.

The conductor, as usual, turned up late. What's that about? The rest of them turned up on time and some of them had to lug around great big musical instruments. He only had a little wand.

I felt sorry for the triangle player. I feel that her days might be numbered. She only tapped on the thing a few times and the only time she really hammered the thing you couldn't hear it because the rest of the orchestra, particularly the noisy double bass players and trombonists were really going at it. Sometime soon the conductor might just put a bell on his shoe and shake it every now and then and put her out of a job.

The standout for me amongst some pretty good stuff was an Elgar piece - Cello Concerto in E Major movement 1. Sombre but beautiful as most of his stuff is. It only came in at number seven but I rated it the best.

Oh, I should say, Settling the Score is kind of like a sophisticated Top of the Pops collaboration between the APO and Radio NZ Concert.
No degenerate Jimmy Saville thank god but presented by that excellent Wallace Chapman.

The countdown was:

9th place - Beethoven Symphony 7
8th place - Tchaikovsky Swan Lake Waltz
7th place -  Elgar Cello Concerto in E Minor Movement one
6th place - Vaughan-Williams Lark ascending
5th place - Holt's The Planets - Mars
4th place - Elgar Nimrod
3rd place Stravinsky Firebird Suite Finale
2nd place - Wagner Tristan and Isolde Prelude
1st place - Schumann Konzerstuck Movement One

Obviously these were excerpts only and, in the case of Wagner just as bloody well as life's too short to sit through one of his operas although I must admit the Prelude was rather lovely.

The less arithmetically challenged of you have probably noticed that the list above is a top nine and not a top 10 countdown.
I guess intellectual geeks often get the basics wrong. At least they all seemed to have their pants on the right way.