Local culture

This is Sunday (evening), 24 May -- and we have just phoned Rhys in Brisbane to wish him happy birthday.

Mary and I got ourselves to a rather remarkable concert in Warkworth, this afternoon, in the historic old Anglican church. They have a very versatile and well-installed electronic organ. Some people get sniffy about these things -- they prefer a genuine pipe organ, they say. Well, no doubt, but the modern electronic (digital...?) instruments are respectable and useful instruments in their own right, it seems to me. They are affordable by smaller churches. We had one in St Peter's, Mt Wellington, and it was actually better for our purposes than a pipe organ. It is 1000 times better than a couple of badly-played guitars, a piano, and some compulsive enthusiast with a trumpet. Or drums.

On this occasion we had the Auckland City Organist, Dr John Wells, who lectures at the university, composes preludes and fugues and other stuff, and is recording an organ version of Bach's 48 Preludes and Fugues. He's talented and very pleasant and witty. So he gave us a programme called The Well-Tempered Afternoon, and it consisted of some J S Bach, some Handel, some Mendelssohn and Vivaldi -- and some John Wells. His own works were played on the parish's fairly ancient piano, and he managed to break the ivory off one of the keys in the process. All good fun. All of this for $20.00. Who needs to travel in to Auckland for culture...

He did explain why Bach called his composition The Well-Tempered Clavier. It all has to do with tuning for different key signatures, and how the modern piano is really a compromise that can be played in any key. In Bach's day the keyboard instruments were tuned only for certain key signatures. And in German, Bach's title means "The Well-Tuned Piano".

So, we enjoyed ourselves. All the music was lyrical, tuneful... And was soothing, since I had just found a flat tyre on my car (which had only just had a new set of tyres fitted), and we had had to come in Mary's car.