GABRIEL'S HORN

Every year the musical purists of Victoria get the opportunity to come together for a series of concerts inaccurately called ‘Organs Of The Ballarat Goldfields’. We say inaccurate as a great many recitals are held with not a Organ in sight. To be correct it should be called ‘Organs of the Goldfields and other Musical Indulgences’.  It is however the rare chance for the Carngham Uniting Church at Snake Valley to show off it’s wonderful instrument believed to be the largest village pipe organ in the State.

Just like old people, old instruments like pipe organs give a bit of a sigh every now and then, fall over and go silent for short periods of time. Some years they lose bits of pipe just like partial dentures and cannot give full voice to the pieces they wish to sing. As a result of this their had to be a few changes to the published program to exclude music requiring those few notes. Alas on top of this the Japanese violinist Miwako Abe was unable to appear due to the ground being shaken from under his feet a few months back. Fortunately at the last moment one of Australia’s top quasi-plumbers stepped in and impressed everyone with his ability to blow some extraordinary sounds through the twists and turns of a lot of brass tubing.

I only recognised three of the dozen or so numbers in the repertoire (mainly due to the fact that classical purists seem to prefer music written 500 years ago) but the programme suited those who like to sit quietly, stare at the high, beamed ceilings and just drink in the sound. That is until the Finale.

Of the several pieces he blew - from sweet dirges to awakening blasts - his parting party piece was a stunning number composed, I think, by Aaron Copeland which required a well-tongued eight notes a second that would have made Jean Simmons (of K.I.S.S) absolutely green with envy. If you have dribbled your fingers along a piano keyboard it would approximate the dexterity of this mans vocal appendage, and even at that speed was able to enunciate clearly each and every note. It’s disappointing to think that we don’t seem to be able to find anyone in Linton just as adventurous and daring to be different for the sake of the town. The result of his Finale left both myself and the rest of the capacity crowd (two performances were required) breathless and standing for his ovation.

Whether you like or dislike the scream of a trumpet, cornet, bugle or flugelhorn and even if you have to shade your ears from the sound of an organ the right piece of music on the right instrument be it electric guitar, bagpipe or bongo drums music brings joy to our sometimes mundane world in ways we don’t always expect.

Prior to this I attended the Minerva Space at the Ballarat Mechanics Institute (a little hidden gem) for Sydney-based ‘Ironwood’ to perform two Mozart Quartet pieces.( #428 for Strings and #478 for Pianoforte). It stunned me to realize that this group (complete with a 1791 Piano carted down from the Sydney Conservatorium) came to Ballarat to perform one concert of two pieces of music taking just over an hour to complete. It was worth the ticket price but what a waste of expensive resources.

In the end one doesn’t have to travel far and the ticket prices are minimal so we would recommend that you book a front row seat for next year at Snake Valley. Imagine being able to go to church with not a priest in sight. It’s like going to heaven and not having to put up with Jesus.