KEY POINTS:
When you cheek the hyper-sensitive Wellington Hydra, you can never be certain which head will strike back.
A couple of weeks back I took a poke at the Wellington-based Montana Book Awards mafia for dumping veteran Auckland author Gordon McLauchlan from its management committee after he dared suggest out loud that the judging panel should be less Wellicentric.
Within days, usually mild-mannered Peter Walls, chief executive of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, let loose in these pages with a sand-bagging of his Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra rival, along with a jibe against "the Herald's disdain for our national orchestra".
He'd been angered by a follow-up to my piece, highlighting the concern in Auckland cultural circles about the Wellington bias in the distribution of national arts funding. In it, APO chairwoman Rosanne Meo had enviously compared the APO's $2.56 million share of annual government funding with the NZSO's $12.34 million.
She incorrectly said the NZSO would only play 12 concerts in Auckland this year. The true figure, including two paid rehearsals, is 17. It all seemed pretty mild and innocuous to me, but down in the capital the sky fell in. "This is the first time in my life I've ever said anything in public that could be construed negatively about the APO," Dr Walls said yesterday, [but] "I didn't have much choice because we'd been very directly attacked."
Talk about nuking a flea. Unfortunately, Dr Walls's timing couldn't have been worse.
For the past two years, the APO has been leading the fight for more equitable regional funding for Auckland arts and service organisations. A parliamentary select committee is currently holding hearings into the regional amenities funding bill which, if passed, will greatly broaden the funding base for these organisations.
Fighting against the bill is every Auckland council, Auckland City excepted. The last thing the APO needed was its rival launching a swingeing attack on its financial and artistic performance and setting out its proper place in a Wellington-ordered world.
It was an eruption of the old Wellington litany that there is only one great orchestra and it's name is the NZSO, and beneath it are the lesser orders who should get on with eating up the crumbs and be grateful.
"The NZSO is a national orchestra,"which exists "to take quality symphonic music to all New Zealanders", wrote Dr Walls. He agreed the APO "has a distinctive role that is worth embracing", but couldn't resist responding to Mrs Meo's complaint about having to play "second fiddle" as far as state funding was concerned, by quipping that second fiddle was "an honourable profession".
The "distinctive role" he refers to is as a pit band accompanying ballet, opera and choral performances. He says the APO also plays straight orchestral concerts but then puts the knife in, saying, "Here, however, the APO often seems to be stretching itself financially and diluting standards by scheduling works that demand forces significantly larger than their 68-musician establishment".
Ironically, anyone who attends both bands' concerts will have noticed that when the APO does augment its forces for bigger works, the ring-ins are often from Dr Walls's orchestra. Surely, he's not saying it's the moonlighters from the NZSO who are dragging APO playing standards down? In a concluding swipe he writes, "There is a myth that APO players are underpaid in comparison to their NZSO colleagues. When calculated on a per-call basis, remuneration is similar".
This is playing games. It is no myth that the annual pay of an APO section leader is around $54,000 compared with a NZSO section head's $87,000. The rank-and-file players get $40,000 and $67,000 respectively. Dr Walls's argument is that his players are on call more than 25 per cent more hours than their Auckland cousins, so on a pro rata basis are worse off than the Aucklanders!
As for the APO's fears that Dr Walls will continue the bad-mouthing when he appears before the select committee this month, the NZSO chief promises to be on his best behaviour. He says he will speak to his written submission, which concludes: "A secure APO has a major contribution to make to the musical life of Greater Auckland and professional orchestral music in New Zealand".
Now was that so hard to say?
