Darmstadt Philharmonic Orchestra With Wolfgang Seeliger

Last weekend I went to see the Darmstadt Philharmonic, conducted by Wolfgang Seeliger, performing Handel’s Firework Music. As Alfred and Margarite shouted me last year, it was my turn to reciprocate the gesture.

Set on the Woog lake like last years concert when they performed Handel’s Water Music, the orchestra was positioned on a large pontoon off shore from the island where everyone was seated. It was a splendid evening considering that for the three evenings prior to the Saturday night we had had some fairly heavy downpours during the night. The weather held up magnificently and the opening prelude was accompanied by a glorious crimson and rose pink sunset in the background. Colours shifting through the red spectrum band as gently and smoothly as the strains of music wafting on the breeze across the unruffled inky blackness of the Woog‘s water. All so very serene and tranquil.

They had a Berlin dance troupe in attendance that specialises in 17th century ballroom choreography. The dancers were all dressed in period costume and they performed a variety of dances to each of the symphonies movements. The orchestra was positioned on either side of the pontoon with the central area being left clear for the dancers.

The Cinderella era would give a better mental perspective of the costuming. The wowdered pigs gobbed in beity....I mean....the powdered wigs bobbed in gaiety. Bum cack, bum cack you’ve slopped your dripper....I mean....come back, come back you’ve dropped your slipper. Symphony music is just so-so serious after all...ahem.

In the last movement they really cut loose with the fireworks which were positioned on the far side of The Woog on the 10m diving board and around its base. The diving tower became a curtain shower of gold and silver whilst the skies over head boomed and cracked amidst the flowering blooms of iridescent psychedelia that fanned out across the whole reserve. As with last year they had many stalls serving food, champagne and beer which we availed ourselves of in civilised moderation. (Aghast, I never thought I would ever utter those two words in the same sentence!) All told it was a very nice evening and the overall performance was outstanding by both musicians and dancers alike.

Introducing The Amazing Fibonacci

Now for a bit of math that some of you will no doubt have seen but once again I have only come across it for the first time recently and I found it quite intriguing.

If you take the number 135, take the first digit to the power of 1, the square of the second and the cube of the third you get the same number again.

135 = 11 + 32 + 53 = 135
the next one in this type of sequence is
175 = 11 + 72 + 53 = 175

a slightly different variation on this theme is

136 = 13 + 33 + 63 = 244
now repeat the process and you get the number you first thought of
244 = 23 + 43 + 43 = 136

The mathematician Fibonacci had imagined a pair of rabbits which produced two off-spring every month, off-spring which began to breed at exactly the same rate one month after birth and asked how many pairs of rabbits would there be after one year. The answer is 144 but the number of pairs of rabbits each month was the most famous sequence of numbers in mathematics: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144. You could always work out the next number in the sequence by adding up the previous two. After 40 months there would be 102,334,105 pairs. That’s some kind of infestation. Just some thing to play with and think about.