THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 148, 24 April 1942, Page 5

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The Programmes

Douglas Lilburn, the New Zealand composer, whose Anglican service was _ recently broadcast from the Christchurch Cathedral, will be heard from 1YA on Friday, May 1. This will be the first performance in New Zealand of his orchestral overture, specially written for a New Zealand Centennial Matinee held in London in May, 1940, to raise funds for comforts for New Zealand troops. It was played on that occasion by the Sadler’s Wells Orchestra, conducted by Warwick Braithwaite, who suggested the title " Aotearoa." It has a slow intréduction which gives a suggestion of the themes to be used in the main allegro section. The performance on May 1 will be by the 1YA Studio Orchestra, Thomas Matthews conducting. kish, Poison, Sugar, Bombs One man’s fish is his neighbour across the Channel’s .poisson. to adapt the old adage, and it will readily be conceded that Vera Lynn and Charlie Kunz are not everybody’s fish. They represent the slightly sugary side of popular entertainment, and Mr. Kunz might be described as a sweet swinger and Miss Lynn as a saccharine soprano. But for all that, you’ve only got to listen to almost any broadcast station for two hours on end to realise how popular they must be. At any rate, the ZB stations have seen fit to introduce a new session (at 7.15 p.m. on Saturdays) featuring these two artists in various combinations and permuta- . NOTHER composition by

tions. And even their detractors are not likely to be as bitter as the listener who wrote in to an Australian station™ and said that he understood a certain singer was known as the Brazilian Bombshell, and added " Any time you hear that she is liable to explode, let me know; I'd like to be there." Tough Constitutions Britons can boast that the British Constitution was not made but growed like Topsy, and that until recently there was no clearly defined and legally constituted Prime Minister or Cabinet. This slow evolution according to needs as they

arose, instead of a careful and logical construction with water-tight provisions for every contingency that might arise, is often said to be the basis of the success of British democratic institutions. The abortive Indian constitution of 1935, and the conversations and conferences centring round the birth of a new Indian political system with Sir Stafford Cripps as chief midwife, gave evidence of the long labour that brings a constitution to birth. The constitution-makers of the early days of the American Republic laboured as painfully and as argumentatively, and one aspect of their problem will be dealt with by Professor Leslie Lipson from 2YA on Monday evening, April 27, when he will speak on "Washington and the Federalists," in his series of talks on American history. Back Out West His admirers will be glad to learn from the 3ZB programmes that Happi Hill is back in familiar surrourdings, the wild, untrammelled west, with a session entithed Way Out Wesf, which is on the air every Saturday evening. Somebody should persuade the Canadian Government to appoint Mr. Hill as an honorary tourist and publicity man for the great wide open spaces. Certainly he must have been respon- sible for filling thousands of young New Zealanders, more particularly in Christchurch city, with a burning desire to live on the boundless prairies where men are men and everything else is everything else without a trace of an inhibi-

tion. Mr. Hill, on the other hand, no doubt owes the wide open spaces a considerable debt. He will probably go on for years and years compiling radig sessions about them, Kultur v. Culture Culture is one of those pleasantly general words that we can apply to as many and as varied things as primitive peoples, a voice, bacteria, sub-tropical fruit, or those people round the corner. But not so Kultur. Kultur means so many German things that it cannot be translated into our own inaccurate language. Or perhaps we just have no Kultur, Ian Finlay, a New Zealander in Britain, who has studied Art and Culture in many European countries does not think that the Nazis have any Kultur, or indeed any Culture either. In fact, his theory is that Nazism was born on the day some years before the last war when Hitler learned that he had failed in the Entrance Examination for the Vienna Academy of Arts. He will explain his ideas on these terms in the BBC talk "Kulture v. Culture," to be heard from 2YA on Sunday, April 26, at 3.0 p.m. A Guest to Order A certain London firm prided itself, in the palmy days before the war, on being able to produce anything that was ordered, from bird’s nest soup to a crosscountry motoring route. In fact a story is told of the embarrassment of a dis-

believing gentleman who ordered a white elephant to test the firm’s efficiency and was faced with an oversize bill as well as an oversize pachyderm. For such a store it would be nothing to supply a butler, a footman, or indeed an extra guest for a dinner party if the numbers were odd or unlucky. What happens to the Tidmarsh family when they try to even up their dinner party in this way and make’a splash is the theme of Anstey’s comedy, "The Man From Blankley’s," which will be heard from 2YA on Sunday, April 26, at 9.27 p.m. The hired minion is announced as Lord Strathpeffer, thereby embarrassing the hostess, who assumes the title to be spurious and who has paired him with the governess, but flattering the bourgeois guests who never expected to

mingle with the aristocracy. Our artist has sketched the scene at the final curtain which goes to show how long Mrs, Tidmarsh held herself in check before she allowed herself the luxury of a faint, Don’t Miss This! If Miss D. E. Dolton had only used an exclamation mark to finish off the title of the talk she is to give from 3YA next Monday we wouldn’t be half so worried as we are, but " How the Family Misses Father" reads more like a lecture on domestic ballistics than a panegyric on the absent paterfamilias. In our own somewhat unhappy experience, the family rarely misses father in either sense of the word. Our everdoving wife can be really a sweet little pancake when she likes, but when she decides to buzz a rolling-pin at one, not even an Italian naval officer could get out of range in time, and though we can affirm that our head is blue-pencilled but unbowed that doesn’t help much, for this accursed facility with missiles seems to run through the distaff side like haemophilia. Egbert certainly gets it from his mother, he uses the same flip and followthrough to devastating effect with his little porringer. In fact we have put his name down at the local Home Guard guerilla school so that should the Japs be foolhardy enough to attempt a landing, his talents will be employed to some good. At any rate, we shall listen to Miss Dolton, but we shall pack off the family to the cinema first of all.