Around The Nationals

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 136, 30 January 1942, Page 20

Around The Nationals

HEN some of us were very \WW/ young we joined the Brownies and Wolf Cubs and learnt to salute with two fingers and the difference between a reef knot and a granny knot, although mother. still had to tie our ties for us. At a later age as Girl ‘Guides or Boy Scouts we learnt much more complicated things like tying a sheep-shank and a sukebind, lighting a fire by rubbing two sticks together, and showing people which way we went by drawing meaningless marks in the dust. Some of the less useful of this lore we have forgotten. But we have never forgotten the cardinal point of scout and girl-guide teaching — "One Good Deed a Day." And, with some shame, we shall always remember the wonderful feeling of exhilaration which took possession of us when. we broke ranks for the last time and realised that we would no longer be tied (with reef-knot or sheep-shank) to the irksome necessity of not only performing our one good deed a day but of thinking up one good deed a day to perform. Perhaps those of us to which this paragraph applies, would get back on the right road if we listened to the serial One Good Deed a Day, which 2YA presents on Saturday mornings at 10.40 PARKER OF THE YARD is the name * of a new serial which will begin at 2YD on Wednesday, February 4, at 9.5 p.m. It is, as you may suspect, all about Inspector Parker’s brilliant deductions, his quick promotion, and his romance. The only trouble is that the villain of the piece gets away with crime for several instalments by being first of all Japanese and then Chinese, then Japanese again, until no one, except Parker (of the Yard) is quite sure who he really is. No doubt listeners will allow for the fact that the serial was produced (and written by C. Harcourt Robertson) before the present unpleasant relations with Japan arose. ~ * cd " "THE Consecration of the House" *" was the name given by Beethoven to his "Grand Overture in C Major," written for the opening of the Joseph Municipal Theatre in Vienna in 1822. Its opus number is 124, which places it immediately before the great Choral Symphony, but there is nothing in the overture that would suggest that it was @ preliminary exercise for the symphony. Some musicians believe that it was the realisation of an ambition that Beethoven expressed to a friend-to write a grand overture in the manner of Handel. Roughly speaking, it consists of a majestic slow march leading to an immense double fugue. Sir Donald Tovey (in Essays in Musical Analysis) compared a certain mysterious figuration played by four bassoons to " the scurrying feet of people entering a theatre." "The Consecration of the House" Overture will be broadcast by 1YA at 7.30 p.m. on Friday, February 6.