THINGS TO COME A Run Through The Programmes

New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 41, 5 April 1940, Page 6

THINGS TO COME

A Run

Through The Programmes

CHANGE in the church is to be responsible for a change in next week’s programmes. As originally scheduled, from 2YA at 3 p.m. on Sunday, April 7, the Rev. Percy Paris would be broadcasting the Rev. M. A. Rugby Pratt’s talks on " Leaders of the Churches in Early New Zealand." The next talk was to cover the Rev. Samuel Ironside and the Rev. John Whitely. This has now been postponed, and at that time next Sunday, 2YA will relay from the Christchurch Anglican Cathedral, via 3YA, the ceremony of installing Bishop West-Watson as Archbishop of New Zealand. Archbishop Averill, retiring Primate, will conduct the installation. Family Fyod "Love Thy Neighbour," a play by Henry McNeish, which won a prize in the 1937-38 radio play competition conducted by the NBS, is the story of a family feud. Two families-the New. Zealand equivalents of the Capulets and Montagues-live on adjoin-

ing farms. Through no real cause, the two heads of the families, once firm friends, have quarrelled and avoided each other for many years. But their families grow up, and when a daughter and a son enter into a plot together to end the feud, the fun begins. This bright little comedy of life on a New Zealand farm, will be presented at 9.25 p.m. on Sunday, April 7, from 1YA Auckland. Good and Better Listeners will find it good news that Jean Macfarlane is again in the programmes, this time from 4YA at 840 p.m. on Monday, April 8. They will find it better still that her items are all old popular songs: from "When You Come Home," to "Hail Caledonia." The programmes promise an attractive group of five songs by the famous New Zealand contralto. There are enough Irishmen in Otago

to welcome the "Hills of Donegal," and, it is certain, enough tolerant Scotsmen to wait through that one for " My Heart Is Sair" and Stroud’s stirring tribute to the land of the thistle and the broth. For the Farmer Although it was not suggested that farmers should stop farming on the outbreak of war and listen to Daventry instead, it was difficult with the plethora of news bulletins from overseas to find room in the programmes for matters of direct farming interest, other than the weather reports. But lately, farm talks have been re-appearing. Next week, for instance, from 1YA, W. Alexander will talk about Sheep Farming in Auckland Province, at 7.40 p.m. on Monday, April 8, and, from the other end of New Zealand, through 4YZ, J. Ramsay will discuss the history of British Friesian Cattle (April 9). For the farmer’s wife, the A.C.E. talks continue as usual. Late Night For those Canterbury folk who stay at home on the evening of Friday, April 12, 3YA has an interesting concert programme. Featured is the Christchurch Liederkranzchen at 8.10 p.m., 8.32., and 8.51 p.m. Before, after, and in between, listeners will hear the Boston Promenade Orchestra, Eileen Joyce, the Albert Sandler trio, Eric Coates and Symphony Orchestra, the Comedy Harmonists, and the Daventry news, with Thomas Reid (tenor), underlined in the programmes at 9.29. Bargain-hunters in the city and towng will be so much the fewer. They Found New Lives When the little ships, so full of people, arrived in New Zealand a hundred and more years ago, they found many new things; but the newest and greatest discovery was their own ability to live new lives in a very new and very strange place. Their story is being told in all the Centennial publications. The latest of these, Dr. Helen Simpson’s book on the women of New Zealand, is now on sale, and is to be reviewed fully in The Listener. The broadcaster’s version of the story is being told from 1YA at present by the Rev. A. B. Chappell, whose fifth talk, on "What They Found," will be broadcast at 7.30 p.m. on Thursday, April 11. The Shadow On March 26, the Shadow of the Swastika did not fall upon 2YA listeners as

scheduled. The broadcast of Episode 2 had to be postponed, and will take place now on Tuesday, April 9, at 8 p.m. Episode 2 is a fifty-minute dramatisation of Hitler’s rise to power. Other people thought they could use Hitler as a dummy in their schemes, as a dupe to take the blame if their plotting should miscarry. He surprised them. Episode 3, to follow in two weeks, is a development of the same theme. It is titled " The Road to Power." Dad and Dave’s Centennial If anyone has kept a list of the individual broadcasts of Dad and Dave from Snake Gully, then he deserves everything he can get. No doubt, if he were given a penny for every performance, he would have enough copper to sheet the hull of the Queen Mary or keep an industrious greaser busy im a ship’s engine-room for the rest of his life and another hundred years after. Of all the " characters" of Australian and New Zealand fiction, only these have lived so long and so vividly. Next week, over Auckland’s 1YA, the Dad and Dave item becomes 100 instalments old. This centennial performance is listed in the programme for Thursday, April 11, at 9.33 p.m. The Week’s Crime The Everyman item from 4YA next week was too good to miss as an opportunity for a little mild fun. Criminologists (sometimes called plain policemen, or, at the best, detectives), are such very serious people. Not so our artist, who most gleefully jumped at an idea that he should illustrate the talk on "Science in the Detection of Crime" in the Heath Robinson manner. His drawing is printed among the programmes of this issue. Purists will point out, of course, that the burglar in the illustration really should have anticipated the fate in store for him, with all those contraptions so palpably visible; but burglars are mugs anyway, and you must admit that the system is decidedly scientific. The item is to be broadcast at 7.30 p.m. on Tuesday, April 9. How to Compose While it can be said that in general, the process is never easy, there is no hard and fast rule on how to compose. This is Eric Coates’s amusing description of the process as applied to himself: "Before I put down a single note on paper, I always experience a weird sensation in my mouth; a sort of throbbing quiver of the tongue, more or less like a pulse. My nearest attempt to a ‘tempera-

ment’ is that I lose my appetite, become inseparably enveloped in an old dressing gown, and find it needs an immense expenditure of will-power to shave." However, these agonies do not seem to impair Mr. Coates’s excellence as a conductor, as you will notice if you listen-in at 9.25 p.m. on Friday, April 12, to 3YA Christchurch. Teutonic Hero When, centuries ago, men began to invent legends about gods and men, they let their imaginations have free rein. Their heroes were all supermen, their heroines superwomen. This is nowhere more apparent than in " The Ring of the Nibelungs." Station 3YA Christchurch will present the opera "Siegfried," which is the third of Wagner’s cycle of four operas on these myths, at 9.25 p.m. on Sunday, April 7. Our artist has illustrated

the hero’s slaying of the dragon, but if you listen to this presentation, you will discover that Siegfried had other experiences, such as drinking the dragon’s blood, killing an evil dwarf, and rescuing a fair maiden. In fact, it might be said that all the serials being broadcast from National and Commercial Stations put together have hardly as many thrills as this opera! Hungarian Flavour Zoltan Kodaly has done much to propagate the national spirit of Hungary in music. Naturally wild, colourful and flamboyant, the tunes of his native country, under his hands, have been woven through many of his compositions. The suite Hary Janos is one of his few works for orchestra-the medium has not attracted him greatly-and is one of the most characteristic of his works. It will be heard at 8.16 p.m. on Thursday, April 11, from 4YA Dunedin.