THINGS TO COME A Run Through The brogrammes

New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 29, 12 January 1940, Page 6

THINGS TO COME

A Run

Through The brogrammes

HE year 1813 saw many remarkable events, one of the most important musically, being the birth of William Vincent Wallace in Waterford, Ireland. His was an adventurous age, and he lived in the spirit of it, going to Australia, sheep-farming there, joining a whaling ship, only just escaping with his life when the crew mutinied, being captured by rebel Maoris and saved in the nick of time ... and, of course, writing operas. His operas, written in collaboration with a librettist by the name of Fitzball, and produced on the London stage in the 1860’s, were highly successful. By far the best known is "Maritana." A brief portrait of Wallace will be presented from 2YA, Wellington, at 2 p.m. on Sunday, January 14, and his "Maritana" will be heard from the same station at 9.20 p.m. that evening.. Music and Marbles It might have been expected that the black population of America would produce the first distinguished musician of Negro origin. Yet Samuel Taylor-Coleridge was born in Holborn, England. Neither his English mother nor

his father was particularly musical, but their curly-headed boy speedily took up the violin, and was often to be found playing marbles with one hand, while the other hand clutched a tiny fiddle. Coleridge-Taylor’s " Petite Suite de Concert" will be heard from 2YA on Wednesday, January 17, at 8.29 p.m. And So They Came As this paragraph is being written and this number of The Listener is going to press, we may cast our.minds back to just a hundred years ago, when the first of the New Zealand Company’s emigrants to New Zealand were

voyaging to New Zealand in small ships. The Aurora left London on September 18, 1839, arrived in New Zealand waters on January 17, 1840, and settled the date of Wellington’s birthday by sailing into Port Nicholson on January 22. The emigrants were carefully chosen by the Company and farewelled with ceremony on a voyage that had a large question mark at the end of it, for the Company was sending them to a country without a government and with no certainty of their being able to get land. The ships were small -the Aurora was about 123 feet long-and the voyage took months. Naturally there will be celebrations of the arrival of this pioneer ship. As a preparation for January 22, D. O. W. Hall will give a talk at 2YA on Friday, January 19, about the selection of emigrants and the voyage out. On the great day itself, Dr. G. H. Scholefield, from the same station, will recall the arrival and tell listeners about its historical importance. Troubled Waters Those well-known cockney comedians, Elsie and Doris Waters, ordinarily travel by car, although sometimes for a long journey they put the car on a train and themselves in a sleeper. One day as their car purred along they were discussing some "Gert and Daisy" gags, and were sublimely unaware that they had entered a 30-mile an hour limit. Suddenly a policeman stopped them. "I’m sorry," he said to Doris who was driving, "but I must see your licence." She showed it and he gave them both a look. "Your insurance please." It was produced, and he examined it; then suddenly looked at them again, and this time grinned. "I've had too many laughs out of you to pinch you," he said, "Go, and don’t do it again." The one and only Gert and equally unique Daze (sorry, Daise) are heard frequently over national stations in sketches of London life. Our English Heritage One of the greatest of modern English composers, Vaughan Williams, has just written a new work, "Five Variants on Dives and Lazarus," which was commissioned by the British Council among the works to represent British music at the World’s Fair; it received its first English performance by the BBC Symphony Orchestra last November. A writer in the London Times says: "... it has the moving quality which Vaughan Williams extracts from our native folk music, a quintessential embodiment of what our English

heritage means to us. He elaborates the simple only to reveal the more ultimate simplicity. .." The comment is true of all his music, as listeners to his "Serenade to Music,’ at 7.30 p.m. on Sunday, January 14, from 2YN, Nelson, will find. Obituary Died, during 1939, of this and that, the old world, aged many million years. And with it Freud, Mayo, Benson, old men and _ little children, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Poland, old prejudices with old ideals. The obituary notice is too big for one small paragraph, too big for a page, or a book, or a library. But Station 2YA will try its hand at a selection in the item "These Served Mankind," to be broadcast on Sunday, January 14, at 3 p.m. Distemper Nature has her own way of curing most animal ‘sickness, but there seems to be nothing so helpless, and hopeless, as a dog dying of distemper. Sometimes, but certainly not always, careful attention will help the dog to recover; but although veterinary science has now discovered a moderating serum, it is expensive, and not yet in general use. The disease strikes most hard at musterers, who will probably not be handy to a radio set when Mrs, A. M, Spence-Clark talks about how to treat distemper, from 3YA at 7.35 p.m. on Friday, January 19. She will have a sympathetic audience, all the same, even if it’s only a household terrier that roots among the tomato plants while his mistress listens, Flowers and Footlights Picture a prima donna singing badly in "Lohengrin" at the Metropolitan in New York, and realising that she is singing badly. Picture her taking the last curtain call and receiving from an admirer a bouquet of lilies; then going into the wings and in her upset starting to pull the blossoms to pieces; and finally realising what she is doing, and pulling herself up with: "Dear God, forgive me for pulling these lovely flowers to pieces, but I did sing like a pig." Then she bursts into tears. This is one of the stories that Leonard Liebling, the eminent New York critic and editor, tells in the second instalment of the NBS feature, "Music and Flowers," which is to be heard at 10.45 o’clock on Saturday morning, January 20, in the Women’s Session, The sub-title of Mr, Liebling’s talk is "Flowers Across the Footlights." Mr. Lieb- ling tells us that Caruso always wore a flower

in his button-hole, and that he, Mr. Liebling, doesn’t feel properly dressed for an evening at the Metropolitan without a similar adornment. He also tells us that some of the bouquets that are passed across the footlights are ordered by the artists themselves. Did you ever suspect that? The Little Ships As this issue circulates among listeners, Clive Highet will be somewhere at sea on the yacht Raukawa, newest boat in the ocean race and one well fancied for seaworthiness and cruisability. However they come home, Mr, Highet will have a good idea of what

happened to them on the journey from Lyttelton to Wellington. He knows all the boats and crews thoroughly, and will interest 2YD listeners as much as he did in that easyflowing interview they had with him three weeks ago on regatta prospects. He talks from 2YD on Thursday, January 18, at 8.40 p.m. on the Centennial Ocean Yacht Race. A New Voice If there is any kind of song more universally popular than lieder (except, of course, the Boomps-a-Daisy variety), we have yet to hear of it. And if there is any voice better suited to lieder singing than a baritone, we have yet to hear of it, too. So an item by a new voice from 2YA on Monday, January 15, at 8.29 p.m., will find us at the receiver. Frank Bermingham, an Englishman who started life with ideas of becoming an optician and found singing more interesting on tour with Fullers and J. C. Williamson, or in Grand Opera for the Australian Broadcasting Commission, will then be giving a recital of five songs, two by Schubert and three by Schumann. If there is any lieder composer we like more than .... but you can guess the rest.