Lucky Auckland

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 418, 27 June 1947, Page 5

Lucky Auckland

T is not Auckland’s fault that 1YA is not always a pleasant noise in Wellington. It is the fault of the intervening mountains, machines, and unquiet air waves that break and distort and muffle the voice of 1YA as it comes. But it is Auckland’s luck and the rest of the Dominion’s misfortune-we shall not say sorrow-that more orchestral music will have been heard in Auckland this month Man has ever befere been heard _in such a short time in any New " Zealand city; and most of it has come from our own national orchestra. There can of course be no such thing as competition in music or even deliberate comparisons; but there can be variety in interpretation and differences in appreciation, and all that excitement will have been Auckland’s in the narrow space of two or three weeks. The rest of us will have listened when and where we can, but it will not have been possible to hear what Auckland has heard or see what Auckland has seen. Fortunately it is the kind of blow we can all cheerfully take. We know that: our own turn will come, and know, too, that what has just happened is an accident only in the timing. The opportunity to see and hear Mr. Goossens has come because of his appointment to Australia; but he would not have loitered in Auckland if there had not been an orchestra there worthy of his professional attention. Nor would Mr. Braithwaite be in New Zealand as a conductor if there were nothing here to conduct. Neither could risk his reputation on a mere fee-for-service foundation. When every allowance is made for the desire of the arrived to help others to arrive, the fact remains that the national orchesoe has been heard so often and : because conductors of dis‘inetion are not afraid of it. Nor are they afraid of the New Zealand public. They know that most people can appreciate good music if it is presented to them in what Mr. Boyd Neel calls the right way -free from all pretentious rubbish about music being something apart from life and difficult for ordinary people to understand.