THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 138, 13 February 1942, Page 3

THINGS TO COME

A Kun through The Programmes —

OST gardeners will interpret the title of the Health in the Home talk from 2YA next Wednesday morning, which is "The Science of Vegetables," as a piece of deliberate malevolence. For, thanks to an erratic season, gardening has proved a snare and a delusion to those who like to think of it as a happy-go-lucky, hit-or-miss relaxation for week-ends. These happy days, the growing of a cabbage entails far more than the casting forth of seed on to the ground and an occasional application of the wateringcan. If the seed survives a ninety per cent. chance of fatality through the agency of flood, frost, or bird of the sky, it is likely to fall victim to white butterfly, woolly aphis, or some other pest. Gardening, in short, is a scientific business right from the moment of planting the seed to the cooking and preparation of the aforesaid cabbage, which is possibly what the Health in the Home talk is more concerned with. Ars Longa Encouraged perhaps by the success of Music While You Work sessions, 1YA and 2YA are introducing small doses of Art into next week’s programmes. Prof, Arnold Wall kicks off from 2YA on Tuesday forenoon with a talk on "The Art of Jesting" ("in thy orisons be all our sins remember’d?"), From the same station on Friday evening, February 20, Diana

Craig presents another session on English essayists, entitled "The Gentler Art"-though from our own experience the efforts of some of, these literati merit a stronger epithet. Finally, 1YA will present a talk by Miss F. Street on Saturday morning on "Art for the People," thus ending the week on an appropriately democratic note. Needless to say all National stations will be broadcasting their customary quota of art songs. Eskimo Pie Listeners to 4YA are in for a treat on Friday week when (at 10.40 a.m.) "a trapper" will give a talk on "Ten Years With The Eskimos." Among our own happiest memories are those of a long week-end which we ourselves spent with the Copper Eskimos of Upernavangalik, a tribe which from time immemorial has provided the North-East Dismounted Police with almost all its recruits. Despite their high destiny (a copper who confessed he had been baffled in Baffin-land would be drummed out of the Force), we found them a happy carefree people,. And well they might be, for unlike political nordics they live, as Stefansson has pointed out, literally on the fat of the land, always take their harpoons to a party, and tan their walrus and their children’s hides with cheerful impartiality. We observed that they used fish-hooks for money, but Nature is kind and a six-months night usually

7 _ suffices for the Eskimo wife to get all the small change out of her husband’s pockets. Indeed, the long night was nearly our own undoing for, following an evening of celebrations, we slept in until a quarter to February and almost missed the boat. Of our artist’s illustration we may therefore well say (if we may coin. a phrase), "There, but for the grace of God, etc." : Milhaudious Music "Darius Milhaud is no atonalist; he is so fond of keys, he uses several at once," wrote Percy Scholes when discussing that composer. On the other hand, someone wrote, "Darius is nefarious; his keys are various, but he’s serious, and doesn’t weary us." At all events, Milhaud is a composer not to be disregarded. He was one of those six young Parisian iconoclasts-‘Les Six," who worked together on occasions

in the ’twenties and helped to blow out some of the delusions that had survived the war. Poulenc, Honegger and Milhaud are the only ones whose music is heard now. Milhaud is in America and probably, like Honegger, writes film music. A string quartet by Milhaud will be heard from 2YC at 9.11 p.m. on Friday, February 20, and "A Summer Pastoral" by Honegger will be heard from 1YA at 2.40 p.m. on Sunday, February 15. Popularity Stakes Ellerslie on race-day. Blazing flowerbeds, Ensembles that have to be seen at a distance to be believed. And crowds milling round the tote, where

the numbers are going up for the Animal Friends Stakes, All are paying 19/6 for a place and it’s £6 for a win on Cat. The punters are worried. Shall they risk getting their money and a bit more back’on Dog, and Horse, the favourites, or shall they go all out and back Cat, who is so often as not a rank outsider, and not always a gentleman? Of course, we know who, in Mrs, Mary Scott’s opinion, will be the winners. But Cat’s backers will not lose their faith in him, because after all, the others have been racing for years and Cat’s a comparative newcomer to the game. But if you want a commentary on the big event listen into "Cats Come Third," in the series "Our Animal Friends" from 3YA on Friday, February 20, at 11.0 a.m, Wagner y. Brahms Controversy always accompanies the experiments of musical pioneers, but few such controversies have been so bitter or so long drawn out as that which raged over Brahms and Wagner in their own day, and which continues even now. Wagner was despised by the purists. Tristan and Isolde was described by a Munich paper as "adultery with drums and trumpets, complete with the entire music of the future." Bizet said: "Wagner is gifted with so insolent a pride that criticism cannot strike him to the heart-if he has a heart." Ludwig: Speidel compared the "leitmotiv" method of giving one leading theme to each person with "hanging a doglicence number round his neck." On the other hand, G. B. Shaw wrote: "There are some sacrifices which should not be demanded twice from any man, and* one of them is listening to Brahms." And Hugo Wolf wrote of

Brahms’s D Minor Piano Concertot "One might easily catch a cold; une healthy stuff." Tchaikovski’s reaction to Brahms was: "It irritates me that this self-conscious mediocrity should be regarded as a genius . . . Brahms is so chaotic, so dry, so meaningless!" Listeners to 1YX’s evening programme on Tuesday, February 7, will be able to compare orchestral works by Brahms and Wagner, and make up their own minds, Imaginary Audience Think of a slightly paunchy gentleman, inclined to be stout (at least three inches shorter than the prima donna) with a face covered with grease paint. Think of a gentleman wearing a matador’s red-lined cloak or doublet and hose a la Romeo, or knee breeches and a powdered wig. Think of black hair smoothly plastered above a receding hair-line and a languorously drooping moustache. And having thought of all these, construct for yourself the lover as he appears in-Grand Opera, And it is apparently for him and his kind that the NBS puts on the air a special session For the Opera Lover, which is frequently heard on Sunday evenings, We can imagine large numbers of these picturesque gentlemen gathered round their radios this Sunday evening, February 15, listening in to 2YA-but pers haps we’ve rather let our imagination run away with us,