THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 9, Issue 223, 1 October 1943, Page 2

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The Programmes

MONDAY \ 7HO can break a mirror without a qualm, .or walk under a_ ladder without a quiver? And how many women can‘ bake a good cake on Friday the thirteenth? You may scoff at these superstitions if you like, but after all, even the act of placing the hand over the mouth when yawning started as a precaution to keep the devils out, and the friendly habit of shaking hands is supposed to be based on the old theory that if you didn’t grab your acquaintance’s hand quickly enough he might run you through with a pike or slip you a quick one over the head with a quarter-staff. Thus most brides to-day still think of the saying "Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue" when they are dressing for the ceremony. Whether this is the theme of 2YA’s programme on Monday, October 4 at 9.40 p.m, we cannot say. The programme is entitled "Something Old, Something New: Famous Song-writers Then and Now," and it will presumably be a collection of modern songs interwoven with old ballads, but the adage of the bride may be worked in somewhere. Also worth notice: 1YA. 7.15 p.m.: Talk: "October on the Farm." 3YA. 9.25 p.m,: Trio in E Flat (Mozart). 4YA, 8.15 p.m.: Masterpieces of Music (Dr. V. E. Galway). TUESDAY "HE is a Russian composer, not merely a Russian who composes," is one of the accepted descriptions of Tchaikovski, and with the substitution of "Norwegian" for "Russian" the same remark fits Edvard Grieg, whose music will be heard in a series of NBS programmes starting from 2YA at 9.40 p.m. on Tuesday, October 5. Grieg’s music has played the part of a bridge over which many millions have passed, from the pleasing and easily-understood to the great things in music, but of all the musicians and writers (from G. B. Shaw to Warlock, Holst and Delius) who have ever censured Grieg for his intellectual shortcomings, none has failed to add a handsome "but," acknowledging an indefinable something that makes him more than a mere pathway to the greater things in music. "It is surely not my fault," Grieg once said, "that my music is heard in third-rate restaurants and from schoolgirls." To which the answer is that much of the best art shows its universality by appealing to the young and unsophisticated. Also worth notice: 1YX. 9.25 p.m.: Concerto in ‘D Major (Brahms). 3¥L, Sesties p.m,: Quintet in G Minor (Mozart). 4YA, 7.15 p.m.: "Women of the Future" (Talk). WEDNESDAY _ N the good old days when ships had sails and rum flowed-from the, portholes, it took a tough boy to run away to sea. Often when he got there, about the only thing that stopped him from running back to land again was the second mate with his belaying pin, and the fact that they were too far out in the ocean to see the land, anyway. Of course there were certain compensations for the belaying-pin — sea shanties, for instance. Every sailor had, apparently, a

rollicking voice and a rollicking manner and everything he did on board ship was supposed to be accompanied by a rollicking shanty of sorts. This may or may not be true, but at least the shanties have provided material for concerts ever since. "Folk Songs That Went to Sea," the title of the programme to be

given by the Chorus Gentlemen from 2YA Studio at 8.39 p.m. on Wednesday, October 6, is a variation on this nautical theme. Also worth notice: 1YA, 8.0 p.m.: Quintet in A Minor (Elgar). 3YA, 9.30 p.m.: Symphony in D Minor (Franck). 4YO, 8.0 p.m.: Symphony Ne. 5S (Tchaikovski). THURSDAY WEEK or two ago we noticed that Haydn was the composer of the moment in Christchurch, Next week, if frequency of broadcasts is any indication, Mozart holds the field. But he is not confined entirely to Christchurch, though there will be more of his music from there than from anywhere else. On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday evenings there will be chamber music by Mozart from. the Christchurch station, with 2YC offering a piano concerto on Wednesday, 4YO a violin sonata on Tuesday, and 4YA the overture to Don Giovanni on Thursday, October 7. In addition, Station 3ZR, Greymouth, presents at 8.0 p.m, (on Thursday, October 7), Quintet in D Major, and 2YN, Nelson, presents a string quartet in F Major at the same time. Also worth notice: 1YA, 7.15 p.m.: "The Dutch East Indies" (Talk). 2YA, 9.40 p.m.: The 2YA Concert Orchestra. 4Y¥A, 8.0 p.m.: Programme by the Minneapolis Symphony "Orchestra. FRIDAY HE stim of £371/17/1 seems little enough to pay for an organ to be built, especially when this amount included board and lodgings for a body of workmen and their families for. 58 weeks, their pay and the pay of the master organ builder himself. Yet this is what was paid to Thomas Dallam, grand organist at the Court of Elizabeth for building the organ at King’s College, Cambridge, in 1651. This Thomas Dallam, born in Dallam, near Lancashire, was the eldest member of a great family of English organ-builders. Listeners will hear more of him on Friday, October 8, at 8.0 p.m. from-1YA, when the Rev. G. A. Naylor will give readings from "Travel Stories." He will deal particularly with the journeys of Thomas

Dallam on behalf of Queen Elizabeth to the Grand Turk. Also worth notice: 2YA, 8.0 p.m.: Kiwi Concert Party. 3YA, 9.30 p.m.: Tchaikovski and his Music. SATURDAY HENRY PURCELL’S opera Dido and Aeneas, from which some of the music has become fairly well known in New Zealand in the last year or two in spectacular arrangements for the modern orchestra, will be sung by the Royal Christchurch Musical Society on Saturday, October 9, and broadcast from Station 3YL. It is not often heard here, even in concert form, though it is short, and no more ambitious for New Zealand musicians than it was for the fashionable girls’ school for which » Purcell originally wrote it. There are tuneful airs, exciting witches’ songs, sailors’ song, and the tense, dramatic lament of Dido, all within its compact space. The opera will be preceded by Bach’s Coffee Cantata (a humorous and tuneful companion of the Peasant Cantata), in which Bach took a good natured fling at the craze for coffee-drinking that hit the town of Leipzig in his day. The conductor will be C, Foster Browne. Also worth notice: 1YX, 9.9 p.m.: "The Faithful Shepherd" uite (Handel). 2YC, 8.0 p.m.: Symphony No. 99 (Haydn). 4YA, 8.0 p.m.: The 4YA Concert Orchestra. SUNDAY HICH is your favourite prelude?" asks Station 4YZ in its programme for Sunday afternoon, October 10, at 2.30 p.m., and you are given half an hour to make up your mind. The decision might be made easy, or it might be complicated by the more puzzling question, what exactly is a prelude? What is it that unites, for instance, Debussy’s "Hommage a S. Pickwick Esq." with the Prelude to Act III. of La Traviata? And what has Bach’s first prelude in C Major (the accompaniment to Gounod’s "Ave Maria") in common with Rachmaninoff’s "Prelude in C Sharp Minor"? A prelude obviously can be the prelude to a fugue, to a suite, to a drama, or to a poem (such as L’Aprés midi d’un Faune) or just a prelude. It can grow to symphonic stature or it can rest content with splashing about among a few chords in one rhythmic pattern, Also worth notice: 1YA, 9.33 p.m.: Symphony No. 1 (Dvorak). 2YA, 9.42 p.m.: Unfamiliar Operas. 3YA, 3.0 p.m.: Viola Sonata No 2 (Delius).