THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 90, 14 March 1941, Page 6

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The Programmes

ATURDAY night variety from 2YA hasn’t been quite its old self recently by which we mean that it hasn’t been its local self. Starting from Saturday, March 22, however, we are to have some flesh’n’blood Variety with a punch, for " Studio Variety " will be on the air with the first of a series of programmes. This promises to be bright entertainment for the family (that is, the family left at home after the young folks have gone to the pictures or a dance). Two well known vocalists have been engaged, Ena Rapley (soprano) end Dan Foley, the Irish singer, with xylophone music from Ted Sundberg, and some two-piano work by two of the local boys, John Parkin and Henry Rudolph. Then there will be breezy comedy by a team known somewhat inartistically as "’Arry, Liz, and Bertie the Babbler." There will be different soloists each week and the first taste this Saturday should be enough to whet your appetite for more.

Two Plays The two plays produced by the NBS that are to be presented on Sunday night, March 16 ("Her Shop" from 1YA, and "Cupid and Commonsense" from 3YA), are as different as the town mouge is from the country mouse. If Arnold Bennett were alive and knew of this remark in The Listener, he would probably be very annoyed with us for likening his "Cupid and Commonsense" to a country mouse, because he tried all his life to forget his provincial background and to be a sophisticated metropolitan, yet his

fame now rests on his stories of the Five Towns. This particular play is about a hard old man of the Five Towns who never spent more than £3 a week in his life, and hated to give an inheritance to his daughter. "Her Shop," on the other hand, is all about Londoners, city folk who engage in affairs which could only happen in a big city. The plot is about a wife who opens a gown shop for a rich society clientele, and although the husband doesn’t like it, makes a brilliant success of her venture. The authors are Aimée and Philip Stewart, who are themselves husband and wife, so perhaps their plot has as authentic a background as the play by Bennett. Dawn and Dusk There is something to be said for the idea of a comprehensive or umbrella title for a group of songs, or series of talks. For example, 4YA are beginning their Winter Course talks with a series entitled "Modern Movements in Thought and Action" ranging all the way from "Road Accidents" to "Education," and from "Intelligence and its Measurement" to "Recent Views on

Race." Grace Torkington, 3YA soprano, goes a step further; she is scheduled to sing a song cycle entitled "The Passing of Day," and brings under the canopy at least two songs on dawn! But we must not be critical of a studio recital which will include the lovely "Bird Songs at Eventide" (Eric Coates) and "O Lovely Night " (Landon Ronald). Grace Torkington is a Lancashire lass well known on Christchurch concert platforms. She has been soloist on numerous occasions with the Liederkranzchen Ladies’ Choir and during Centennial Music Week sang the solos for the choir’s performance of the cantata "Eden Spirits." , Artful Aid Most schoolboys will know the tag about apt alliteration’s artful aid to something or other. Well, alliteration is now on the air from 4ZB as an audience participation programme; and any Dunedin schoolboys who are proficient in making up alliterative sentences should go along; they’ll probably earn some pocket money. The " Alliteration Quiz" started off in 4ZB’s. Sunday evening " Merry-go-round," and proved so popular that it is now taking the air on its own account every Tuesday evening at 8.45. It has several forms alliteration being the common denominator. One competitor may be asked to give in ten seconds five two-letter words beginning with the letter "I" while the next may

be called on to name eight articles found in a grocery shop beginning with the letter "B." For the Irish There is a story about an Irish policeman in New York who was shepherdinz a dear old Irish lady across the road. She had never seen traffic lights before, so he explained that when the light

showed green that was the sign for Irish people to cross in complete safety, but when it turned to red for England, it was dangerous to move. She watched for some time, then confided: "Glory be, Pat, but you don’t give the Orangemen much time to cross." This is as good a way as any to tie up our artist’s illustration with the reminder that 2YA will be relaying the St. Patrick’s Day concert from the Wellington Town Hall next Monday evening. It is obviously a reminder for non-Irish listeners only: the Irish will all be at the Town Hall in person. But whoever hears it, this concert should be a worthy St. Patrick’s Day effort, with songs by Dan Foley, the Bijou Quartet, Patrick Carmody (boy soprano), and the 500 voices of the combined choirs of the Marist Brothers Schools. Romance in Music As is fairly generally conceded, there is romance in music and music in romance; it is with the former premise, apparently, that the new ZB session featuring Donald Novis and Jan Rubini is concerned. The idea, briefly, is that a compere relates odd or romantic stories about famous artists and composers as an introduction to Novis’s light tenor songs and Rubini’s violin and ensemble playing. Novis, of course, is well known to listeners; at one time he sang so often and so ardently in support of a certain brand of tyre that he became known just as the voice of that tyre. It must have been slightly embarrassing for a serious artist, which he undoubtedly is. Rubini visited Australia last year, and is a musician of the gipsy-make-your-violin-sing type. "Romance in Music" starts on Monday, March 17, and will be heard every Monday at 10.0 a.m. from the four main ZB stations. A Backblocks Bride Twentieth century pioneering experiences in New Zealand can be as bitter and as amusing as anything "west of the Mississippi" presented to cinema audiences-as any reader of the " Barbara in the Backblocks" stories knows full well. Mrs. Mary Scott has written of backblocks life out of the deep well of experience, but with such easy grace

and good humour that, for the thoue sands of newspaper readers of her Barbara stories, the heartbreaks she must have known are glossed over. But no glossing can cover the difficulties and worries of her trek across the Auckland rovince to a new backblocks home, which she tells in her recorded talk "The Bride in the Bush," one of her series in "A Backblocks Woman Remembers," which will be heard from 4YA on March 21, at 7.15 p.m. Combined Effort Just as most books about Nelson turn out to be books about Lady Hamilton, so the music of Borodin in "Prince Igor" turns out on closer inspection to be partly the mtisic of Rimsky-Korsakov. Borodin was a Professor of Chemistry who wrote music whenever he was laid up with a cold, and he pottered round for 20 years with the flattering idea that it would be nice to be known as the author of an opera. He did have several attempts at it, but died before he really got settled down to the task. His friends, Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazounov, gathered up the pieces of music he had written, eight completed numbers in all, re-arranged them, wrote all the rest that was required, and then presented the result to the world as an opera by Borodin. Two other friends, Stassov and Lyadov, had also helped during Borodin’s lifetime; but it would take a very expert musician to tell just where one composer starts and the other ends. "Prince Igor" is being presented from 4YA on Sunday, March 16, in the NBS "Music from the Theatre" series.