LOOK BEFORE YOU LISTEN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 84, 31 January 1941, Page 17

LOOK BEFORE YOU LISTEN

A Run Through The Records

By

B.

W.

Beer, Beef, Barred STEUART WILSON, whose voice will be heard from Auckland next week, says that the trouble with his biography is that there is nothing in it that is not wholly respectable. "I am the son of a clergyman," he says, "itself an unadventurous thing. I have been given a classical education at a public school (Winchester) and an old-fashioned university (Cambridge). I was one of the original members of the English Singers, and soon after the last war we were singing Elizabethan music in most of the countries of Europe. I have translated songs from more languages than I know, and still believe that for an Englishman to sing to Englishmen, English is the best language. I was once a musical critic; within a few months I let my paper in for a libel action which was settled out of court and I got the sack. I don’t belong to London-if I belong anywhere it is to the North Country. I was reared in Lancashire, and the cradle of my Wilson ancestors is Cumberland, where they farmed sheep in decent obscurity. I hope that my singing will be as good as their Herdwicks. I may say that I neither drink nor smoke nor eat beef." Steuart Wilson, tenor, will be heard at 1YA on Monday, February 3. Made to Sing BRIAN LAWRANCE says that he first became interested in singing in rather a curious manner. At the age of seven he had an invitation to attend a fancy-dress carnival, and during the evening a very burly boy grabbed hold of little Lawrance and commanded him to sing, more as a joke than anything, and he was too scared not to obey. The result was that he was urged to take singing seriously. During the year following that fancy-dress carnival debut, Brian made his first appearance as a professional in pantomime at Adelaide. Then he went to Sydney, where he got engagements to sing at concerts. Boys’ parts in one of J. C, Williamson’s companies was the next step, and that was followed by three and a half years with Pat Hanna’s "Diggers." He then went to London and found scope for his versatile talents as actor, baritone, and dance-band leader. Brian Lawrance and His Quartet will be heard from 3YA on Saturday, February 8&8, Se, Short and Round "7 ISTEN," said Lina Pagliughi, one of the finest coloratura sopranos of the day, to a newspaper man: " You cannot have a great coloratura voice without being large." Pagliughi is very short and remarkably rotund. "The high sopranos and tenors have to put up with the discomfort of being large. There is no way out. If you want to see slim, pretty girls playing operatic roles, then you must go to the films ... I hate, as a ‘stout lady,’ being asked to run here and there and appear in most improbable situations with a stout tenor. Fat prima donnas are figures of fun. But fat prima donnas would much sooner sing in concerts than in any opera. Singing is my life, not taking part in lovescenes like a sylph of a girl. I assure

you it is impossible for a tenor or coloratura soprano to be successful without great breathing capacity. That comes from singing. With it comes this fine development which has made prima donnas the subject of so many jokes. It is singing, and not eating, which has given me my figure. 4YA listeners will hear Lina Pagliughi, soprano, on Thursday, February 6. Advice ISCHA ELMAN took to the fiddle as ducks take to water, and when he was only five he played at a village concert. Two years later he played at a reception for a Russian prince. "For an urchin of seven," he says, "I flatter myself I rattled off Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata finely. This sonata, you know, has several long and impressive rests. Well, in one of those rests, a motherly old lady leant forward, patted my shoulder, and said ‘Play something you know, dear.’" Mischa Elman, violinist, will be heard from 3YA on Wednesday, February 5.