RADIO CELEBRATES CHRISTMAS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 78, 20 December 1940, Page 7

RADIO CELEBRATES CHRISTMAS

NBS Offerings For The Week

Christmas has arrived almost unexpectedly this year. There have been regrettable distractions. But we have managed to remember it, and the NBS has not forgotten to prepare for it. Already this month Christmas music has been making itself evident in the programmes. The Choral Societies and Handel have been helping to prove what Heddle Nash said recently when he returned from Australia: that the current popularity of sacred music is due to more than the season. He had found, he said, that people were turning more and more to the peace and quietness of hymns, oratorio, psalms, choral singing, as a relief from the strain of wartime existence. Of that sort of music the programmes for next week offer a good selection. Special services will be relayed and midnight masses in three centres will usher in Christmas Day. Here are some selections from the main National programmes:

(): Sunday, December 22, 1YA features Yehudi Menuhin, playing Schumann’s beautiful Violin Concerto in D Minor, with the Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra of New York. In "La Gioconda," the opera featured in the late evening programme, Ponchielli’s music will please listeners. The Port Nicholson Band is 2YA’s most interesting local feature on the Sunday. In its evening concert there will be included a bracket of carols. In the afternoon 2YA has Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on a theme by Tallis, played by the Boyd Neel String Orchestra, and the evening programme, after the news, Tuns into a comedy by H. K. Jean: "Further Outlook Warmer." Perhaps that will be a happy augury for the week’s weather. String music, coincidentally,, seems to be very popular on Sunday. Station 3YA features more of it that same afternoon. They have the London String Quartet playing Cesar Franck’s String Quartet in D Major, and listeners should know both this composer and the quartet well enough now to believe that this is very good stuff. Laymen can never understand why composers give their work such dull labels. These somethings-or-other in something-or-other read like a catalogue. However, we can recom-

mend this item in spite of a taste in titles which seldom comes up to the standard of " Nutcracker Suite" or even (let it be whispered while the snobs are not listening) "The Moonlight Sonata." Dunedin’s 4YA does not start in seriously with its Sunday afternoon programmes until 2.30 p.m., when Beethoven’s Waldstein Sonata will take 20 minutes of programme time. A straight classical programme follows. Christmas Eve On Monday, the programmes are according to pattern. Midnight items are the feature of Christmas Eve programmes on the Tuesday. In Auckland, 1YA will relay from St. Patrick’s Cathedral, where His Lordship Bishop Liston will be the preacher. Wellington will hear the Midnight Mass from St. Gerard’s Redemptorist Church. Ernest Jenner’s music was composed for the Midnight Mass which 3YA will relay from St. Michael’s Anglican Church (Rev. C. E. B. Beauchamp). Dunedin radio will go to bed most properly at midnight on Christmas Eve, but from 11.30 listeners will look forward to hearing the Dunedin Choral Society’s Madrigal Club in half an hour of carol singing.

Christmas Day On Christmas Day, 1YA features the Nativity play by Dorothy Sayers, "He That Should Come." | This is to be broadcast at 8.4 p.m. Station 2YA features in the afternoon a Christmas play, "A Reputation for Benevolence," and in the evening Paul Robeson with Alfredo Campoli’s Orchestra. Heddle Nash is to give a studio recital at 8.34 p.m. A carol service from Christchurch Cathedral opens 3YA’s Christmas night programme and O. L. Simmance will make use of the atmosphere thus created with his readings from Dickens. Ignaz Friedman appears among the recorded artists who follow, and between 9.30 and 10 p.m. another artist who has visited New Zealand comparatively re-cently-Olga Coelho-will be featured in a recital. On Christmas morning 4YA will relay, from St. Paul’s Cathedral, an AnteCommunion Service. In the afternoon this station has a dramatisation of Dickens’s "Christmas Carol,’ and, to open the evening programme, a play for Christmas written by Richard Matthews: "The Shadow."

Boxing Day For Thursday, which is Boxing Day, 2YA will offer those listeners who stay at home out of the sunshine progress Teports of the inter-Provincial cricket match between Wellington and Auckland. The times to check the score are listed in detail in the programmes. In the evening programme the station goes suitably gay with the Four Kings of Rhythm, the Swingtime Harmonists, and a comedy called "A Marriage Has Been Dis-Arranged." After the news there is to be a special presentation of "The Yeomen of the Guard." Dunedin’s sporting news will be the Dunedin Jockey Club’s meeting, which 4YA will relay at intervals from Wingatui. In the evening programme there is "Good-Bye Mr. Chips," a radio adaptation of James Hilton’s novel. Back to Work On Friday New Zealand will mostly be busy getting on with the war effort, although the Auckland Trotting Club has its meeting at Alexandra Park. Station 1YA will handle the relays of commentary. In Wellington Heddle Nash appears with Andersen Tyrer in 2YA’s programme. Station 3YA opens with Chopin before broadcasting a programme by local artists, and 4YA offers Dad and Dave, the rhumba and its rhythms, the Circle of Shiva, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and Professor T. D. Adams.