THINGS TO COME A Run Through The Programmes

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 56, 19 July 1940, Page 6

THINGS TO COME

A Run

Through The Programmes

LTERATIONS in the Daventry trans- -\ missions timetable have brought new voices and a new method of news announcing to New Zealand listeners. Whereas previously the midday news was re-broadcast direct and also recorded for broadcast within New Zealand at 12.30 midday and 1.15 p.m., now Daventry has altered its timings so that the 12.30 midday re-broadcast is direct from England and is broadcast here as a recording only at 1.15 p.m. New Zealand is now picking up a news broadcast designed for North America, and the new voice and different presentation is very noticeable. The announcer who is a Canadian radio commentator attached to the Canadian forces in England, briefly gives all the main items of news, at much less length than in the ordinary bulletins and following his slightly nasal summary. comes a speaker like Vernon Bartlett M.P., to give a commentary obviously intended to interest American listeners especially. Alterations to the Daventry news transmissions are included in the list on our short-wave page this week. Feminine Appeal In these days of COriientttoes, leagues, boards, councils, societies, and the rest, mere men are beginning to think of feminine appeal in terms of boxes with little slots in-the top, held out at street corners wherever they turn. Hence the illustration, which must be

given some connection with the item it is supposed to illustrate, however difficult it may seem to be to relate Hildegarde, the Pickens Sisters, and Peggy Cochrane, performing from 2YA at 8.28 p.m. on Saturday, July 27, with our artist’s winsome wench. However, it is probably an admission by men that there are some few things for which

women are better fitted. Listeners who agree with this roundabout hypothesis can’ check up on the theory applied to light musical entertainment, if they care to watch for this item in the programmes. Beer’s Place in History One of the leading lights of early Wellington began his successful career by setting up a barrel of beer on the beach in 1840 and selling the contents. From this he graduated to keeping a popular hotel and was a member of the first Wellington City Council. Hotelkeeping in the early days was a colourful occupation. Perhaps the calling reached its most exciting and romantic heights (and possibly depths) in Westland in the digging days, when the mushroom towns were simply stiff with pubs. Listeners are going to hear something about the hotelkeepers of the early days in a talk in the Winter Course series at 2YA on July 22, by L. R. Palmer and T. G, Hislop. Light on Light Light is not something which you can see, it is something which enables you to see. It is not something you can grasp in your hand, weigh, feel, or smell. It is like colour, it does not really exist at all. It is just something which appeals more favourably to the human eye than darkness. It is indeed very mysterious to the lay mind to be told that red, for example, is not red, but the reaction of a certain form of matter to a cause whose effect we call "red" for the sake of brevity. However, these intangible matters. will be given form for us from 4YA at 7.30 p.m. on Tuesday, July 23, when Miss A. Blackie, M.Sc., and Dr. C. M. Focken, will answer the question "What is Light?" Both are specialists in physics, and both lecture in the subject at Otago University. If light is anything, they will be able to say what. Tragic Lovers When choosing his opera plots, Wagner spurned anything which was not vast in scope and design. Everything had to be on the grand scale-the Valkyrie galloping through the clouds, or the Venusberg, are typical examples. So, also, "Tristan and Isolde" is strident with fights for honour, chivalrous encounters, and potent love philtres. The actual plot is similar to the story of "Paolo and Francesca." In that tale, the ugly dwarf sends his handsome brother to bring home his betrothed. In the Wagner opera, King Mark

sends his nephew Tristan to fetch the lovely Irish princess, Isolde. In both instances these couples fall in love; and in each case their passions can have only tragic fulfilment. Music from "Tristan and Isolde" will be presented at 9.44 p.m. on Sunday, July 21, from 2YA, Wellington. The Tyrers The name of Andersen Tyrer has been the big musical news of the Centennial year in New Zealand, and still fresh in the minds of music-lovers is his work as conductor of the Centennial Music Festival concerts. But lovers of good music will not have forgotten that Mrs. Andersen Tyrer is a fine musician in her own right, and one of the most brilliant woman violinists to be heard in this country. What then could afford a bigger musical treat than recitals by Nanette Andersen Tyrer accompanied by Mr. Tyrer? Listeners to 4YA Dunedin, at 8.20 p.m. on Sunday, July 21, will hear these two artists play the Violin Concerto in D Minor by Wieniawski. Words Except for the strong, silent man of legend, a creature surely going into extinction in these wordy days, there was a time when words for men and women meant conversation in which the obligations and the opportunities for delivery and reception were equal. But now the two-chain two-way road of talk has become a great chute down which the traffic pours one-way only. Words in the morning, words at noon, words all the night through, and we cannot answer back. Nor can’we ask them to repeat that doubtful sentence, nor clarify that doubtful meaning. The words come and are gone. All the more important then that those who speak them and those who listen to them should know what words mean, and how they can be twisted "to make a trap for fools." It is timely that such an expert as Professor Arnold Wall should be giving a talk on "The Meaning of Words." It will be heard from 4YA at 7.30 p.m. on Friday, July 26. White Into Black For a change from "The Woman in White" listeners will next week be able to tune in to "The Woman in Black," a new serial which begins at 2YA on Wednesday, July 24, at 9.23 pm. The woman who wears black is an Armenian who was abducted and kept in a harem until she escaped and married a man who made a lot of money from her acting and then ran away with it. Herbert Sterne, thrown over by Enid Chilcaster at

the instigation of her mother, meets the overmarried Armenian, and it transpires that her late husband is his rival in romance. There are vatious sub-plots and counter-plots and sub-sub-plots but in the end Enid’s mother, who wanted at first to marry Herbert herself, ends up in the arms of a detective who turns out to be a French nobleman. What Cook Did On the general principle that it is not a good thing to take everything seriously all the time, we have inveigled our artist into taking a liberty this week. In 1YA’s programmes for Thursday, July 25, listeners will

see an intriguing title to the Winter Course talk: "What Cook Did." Here we present what cook did. But in truth this does not present the clearest possible picture of the subject matter in this talk in the series " History for Everyman." No culinary casualties will be described, unless the speakers make passing reference to the cannibalism of the Maoris. What our artist’s cook did to. the capon is nobody’s business, but what Captain Cook did for New Zealand is everybody’s business; and it is his activities which will be covered over the air, not the domestic matter suggested by the item’s brief caption. Krazy! If you like the brand of humour which figuratively is of the straws-in-your-hair variety, you should find "Krazy Kapers" your liking. This is a new show from Australia, in several parts, and it is to be heard first from 2YA Wellington. at 8 p.m. on Saturday, July 27. The culprits are Oswald, who sounds as if he sucks his moustache while he talks, Jock McLaughlan, who is a braw Scot, and Hetty, on whose voice you could break a spanner. The wisecracks are screwball, as the Americans say. But ie: should like the show.