THE ORCHESTRA ON THE COAST

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 543, 18 November 1949, Page 7

THE ORCHESTRA ON THE COAST

Sir-In your issue of October 28, there is an article by "G. leF. Y.""The Orchestra on the Coast." In fairness to those hundreds of Coasters who deeply appreciated the visit of the orchestra, I feel impelled to protest at the tone of slighting condescension in which the article was written. A reader who knew nothing of the Coast could be forgiven if he gathered from the article that the is inhabited by a race of web-footed. oafs utterly incapable of aesthetic experience. One _ scarcely knows whether to be more amused or annoyed at the writer’s mentioning rain eight times in eleven paragraphs and his quite deliberate ignoring of the fact that three out of the four days the Orchestra spent in Greymouth and Hokitika were brilliantly fine. Such misrepresentation is, however, relatively unimportant compared with what follows. Why should "G. leF. Y." have been so apprehensive of the effect of a symphony, orchestra upon Coasters? What is the factual basis for his implication that the Coaster is alien to the rest of New Zealand? One gathers*the impression that the members of the orchestra took their lives in their hands venturing into the wildernes$’ to soothe the savage breasts of its inhabitants with music. Perhaps "G. leF.. Y." expected to be waylaid by bushrangers somewhere along the road. His ignorance of the Coast becomes little short of insulting when he chooses to describe, from among alt those who attended the concerts, two odd people whom he naively characterises as "Coast types." Of the concert audiences He says, "I suppose they had screwed themselves up for an ordeal," implying that it is quite improbable that a barbarous Coaster could possibly have any understanding of symphonic music. By such cheap sneers, "G. leF. Y." reveals himself as an extremely insensitive person to interpret the effect of any great art upon the people. He gives several paragraphs to the chattering of three tiny tots for whom the concerts were not intended, and except for a casual mention ignores the hundreds of quiet, well-mannered, appreciative teen-agers in the school audiences, of whom Andersen Tyrer said afterwards with warm commendation, "Weren’t they good?" I wonder if "G. leF, Y." bothered to question any of those youngsters as to how they enjoyed the programme. It is regrettable that so memorable an occasion for the Coast as the first visit of the National Orchestra should have been recorded in a. responsible journal by so paltry and prejudiced an article. I can only hope that readers of The Listener will be more charitable in their reading than was "G. leF. Y." with his pen.

H. C.

HOOPER

(Greymouth).