THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 108, 18 July 1941, Page 6

THINGS TO COME

A Kun Through The Programmes

T was a happy thought which led to the 2YA Saturday evening variety programme being christened "Merry go = Lucky.". Directed by Henri Penn, this musical variety show is designed to suit that great army of listeners who are neither high nor low in the cranial arch and who look for something light and entertaining once they have got their feet on the mantelpiece on a wintry Saturday evening. While the session does not aim to provide chamber music, it does not jazz off to the other extreme. What you lose on the swing, in short, you gain on the roundabout. The Dismal Thirties The life of Winston Churchill, as told in Imperial Leader, moves on to momentous days in 1ZB. The period is the dismal. thirties, and there are few events which, seen in retrospect, did not’ contribute to the landslide which ended in the present war. In the episode which | will be heard from 1ZB on Saturday, July 26, Churchill is once again an independent, once again a trenchant critic of the Government, and unable to see the necessity for a coalition between the Baldwin Conservatives and the Labour Party. But Churchill is even more distressed at what he sees happening in Germany. On a visit to that country not long after Hitler’s accession to power, he takes note of the endless drilling, the uniforms, the surreptitious re-armament, above all the beginnings of air power. But his warnings are brushed aside with @ laugh by a House of Commons, and he

is even branded war-monger and diehard. How well founded his alarm was you will realise as you follow this feature. Grapefruit And Its Juices It is all very well to learn in the American magazines that all smart and up-and-coming Americans start their day right with grapefruit for breakfast, but it is quite another thing to discover how to eat grapefruit elegantly. We've watched them in the movies, but the stars seem to have no difficulty with

either the stray squirts of juice (except of course in comedies), or in making the darn thing balance on the plate. Is it that the genuine American grapefruit is a different breed from our New Zealand version? If it is, we hope A. M. W. Greig will say so in his talk from 1YA on Monday, July 21. If he can put our Hollywood struck: girls out of. their misery, and get them back on to porridge again so that their mothers can use the New Zealand grapefruit for marmalade, he will have struck a blow for beauty, the home, and the citriculturists. Count the Ways It is, of course, for her poems, more particularly her series of Sonnets. from the Portuguese, that Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s name will live in English literature, but such is the incurable romanticism of popular biographers that it is probable that few people who saw the film, The Barretts of Wimpole Street, or who have heard the radio biography, which will start from 2ZA, Palmerston North, on Wednesday, July 23, could recite a single line of her poetry. Those who are further interested in Elizabeth’s romantic attachment, will be excited to hear that there is another account of it in a book entitled, rather archly, Miss Barrett’s Elopement, by Mrs. Carola Lenanton. For ourselves, having seen the film and having had a few more details filled out by the Cavalcade of Drama biography, we're not inclined to pursue Miss Barrett much further. Livid Beasts Admirers of Reginald Gardiner and students: of onomatopoeia should find the fourth act of 2YA’s evening programme on Thursday, July 24, equally interesting, and even members of the Locomotive Drivers, Firemen and General Cleaners Industrial Union of Workers may not be indifferent to the broadcast. At any rate, according to the programme, Mr. Gardiner is going to give his famous ay"

monologue on "trains," complete and unexpurgated. We intend to listen ourselves, though frankly (and in your ear) we dislike trains and are convinced that if there were none we wouldn’t miss them, And that, of course, is more than we can say at the moment. Happiness From Within The popular theory that composers turn out their greatest masterpieces in poverty-stricken garrets was true on one occasion anyway. Mozart composed and wrote his three greatest symphonies within the short period of six weeks at a time when he was sadly in need of money. Yet the Symphony No. 39 in E Flat Major, which will be’ heard from 3YA on Wednesday, July 23, overflows with the joy of life. If we lesser mortals were in such a plight we couldn’t play, let alone compose,’ works which have been hailed as " the expression of perfect happiness": but then we're not budding "Mozarts. "* Working And. Playing The programme of recordings by the band of the Fairey Aviation Works which will be heard from’ Station: 4ZB in the band session next Sunday morning provides an interesting example of the manner in which England is ‘carrying. on musical activities in war time. In common with all war industries the Fairey works are working day and night, and

there would be every excuse for relegating brass band activities to the background. The band is still carrying on, however, and the items which 4ZB listeners will hear: were- recorded at the works to.save travelling time. (There is, of course, every reason to believe that the players stopped work while actually recording, and our artist’s suggestion that they managed to do both at the same time is frivolous.) One of the items is a canteen sing-song, other employees at the works joining in with choruses of popular songs. 5 Breath Control When Watkin Mills, the English basso, toured New Zealand, he was known as the man who breathed about once a fortnight, so amazing was his breath control. Listening to Leon Goossens one gets rather the same impression. Leon, the butt of the epigram, "It is now perfectly safe to say Oboe to the Goossens," started oboe playing with the inherited advantage of good breath control (he is the son and grandson of opera singers), became the first oboist of Queen’s Hall Orchestra at seventeen, and nowadays has just about established a "corner" in the oboe world, Stimulated

by his playing, his brother Eugene and a few other British composers have written special chamber works in which his instrument ‘can take part, and Arnold Bax’s Quintet for Oboe and Strings, which will be heard from 2YA on Monday, July 21, is one of these. Commemorating Kipling Rudyard Kipling has had a lot of things done to him, including a society founded in his honour, but nothing quite so unkind as the competition conducted by an English literary journal a few years ago to perpetuate his name in nursery rhymes. The prize was won by an entry of the "A is for author and B for his Books" type, of which the following is part: I for India he has made known to the West, J for the jungle-the beasts know it best; K for King-Emperor whom India has hailed, L for the Light that so dismally tailed. M for the white man whose burden is grave, N for the native who is not a slave. O for the oiler-the liner’s going still, P for the Puck who inhabits Pook’s Hill. Another angle on Rudyard. Kiplinghis poems which have been made into songs-will be referred to in the talk in the "Poet and Composer" session from 2¥A on Friday, July, 25.