Gramophone magazine created predictable ripples last week when they published the latest of their trainspotterish top 20 lists, this time the world's greatest orchestras. Or to put it more accurately, a handful of invited critics' twenty favourite orchestras.
But who wants to nitpick whether the Berlin Phil is better than the Vienna Phil? What about those musicians who are redefining (or just abusing) the term 'orchestra'?
Here in no particular order is my alternative top 20. So alternative there aren't even 20 names on the list! Outta there!!!
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The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain
The all-uke band behind the great British ukulele revival, almost singlehandedly responsible for encouraging a whole generation of neophyte musicians to pick up their first instrument - with more success than any number of state-sponsored initiatives and well-meaning outreach programmes. Just for that, they deserve a medal.
Their live shows are hilarious and dazzling and guaranteed to make you want to rush out and strum the bonsai guitar yourself. They tour all over the country, but return to Cecil Sharp House in Camden once a month, next date 18 December.
Here they tackle Devil's Gallop by Charles Williams on German TV:
and prove that just as granny says, all modern music sounds the same - and Handel wrote everything first anyway:
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A bunch of Brummie circuit-benders, who play with rewired electronic toys discovered at car boot sales. Electro pop in a faux-fur coat.
They play Covent Garden Piazza on 4 December at 6pm as part of the Covent Garden Christmas Delight festival - admission free.
The Modified Toy Orchestra with Grand Occasion:
and here Modified Toy Orchestra main man Brian Duffy explains how, but not why, in a French TV documentary:
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There's more than one musical Wiener in Austria's capital. The Vegetable Orchestra of Vienna plays instruments made from fresh vegetables. They say "The utilization of various ever refined vegetable instruments creates a musically and aesthetically unique sound universe." I say I never knew a carrot sounded like that. They craft new instruments for each performance, so no two shows sound the same.
This video shows the orchestra selecting and preparing their instruments, followed by some concert extracts:
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Animal orchestras
After the vegetables come the animals. Nowadays an animal orchestra would be guaranteed to draw the wrath of the RSPCA - and that's just for starters.
But it wasn't always so. In The Cat Orchestra and the Elephant Butler, Jan Bonderson relates how the feline organists of Signor Capelli enchanted 19th century London. And he describes the orgue à cochons of Louis XI's court - a row of pigs with nails through their tails, each of which emitted a differently-pitched squeal. A marginally less unkind version of this was constructed for Gabriel Aghion's 2000 movie Le Libertin - the piggy tails merely tweaked:
