THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 9, Issue 225, 15 October 1943, Page 2

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The Programmes

MONDAY N last week’s Listener a correspondent signing himself "Scots Wha Hae," asked whether it was regarded as a crime to play bagpipe records over the air. He pointed out that there is such a thing as a bandsman’s hour regularly in each main centre, and demanded "pipe bands alternately with the brass." Since that correspondent: wrote from Waihi, he will be glad to know that Station 1YA had decided even before his letter was published that it was time the Scots of the north heard some of their national music; but we hope he will not feel there is something pointed about Margaret Barrett singing "O whustle and I'll come tae ye" during the Scottish interlude that will be heard from 1YA at 10 p.m. -on Monday, October 18. Also worth notice: 1ZB, 9.0 p.m.: "When the Wind Whistles" (Play). 2YA, 7.15 p.m.: "Literature in New Zealand" (Talk). 4YA, 8.13 p.m.: The "Trout" Quintet (Schubert). . TUESDAY SINCE his story was first dramatised by a Spaniard in the 16th century, Don Juan (or Don Giovanni as the Italians call him) must have changed his shape almost as many times as authors have taken him up as a subject. He has been anything from an_ unprincipled roué whose adventures are recounted for the sake of moralising, to a handsome young spouter of aphorisms (as in Bernard Shaw’s Man and Superman where he is the quarry instead of the huntsman). In verse, he has been taken up by Byron and Browning, still consistent only in his inconstancy. Moliere’s Don Juan, became Mozart’s operatic Don Giovanni. but once having assumed a musical shape this celebrated libertine was not content to have only one great composer on his list of conquests, so he tempted Richard Strauss to write a luscious orchestral tone-poem, which will be heard from 1YX at 9.44 p.m. on Tuesday, October 19. Also worth notice: 2YA, 8.20 p.m.: Concerto No. 1 (Paganini). 2ZB, 10.30 p.m.: "The Yogi of West 9th Street" (Told by Donald Crisp). 3YL, 8.18 p.m.: Songs from the ‘Winter Journey" (Schubert). 4YA, 7.15 p.m.: The Story of Radio-Location, WEDNESDAY RAWLING, Danish-seining, set-net-ting, and drag-netting, other net fishing, and lines and windy buoys, longlines and hand-lining: there is a sound of ancient incantation in those words, almost a hint of invocation to a god, but you will find them all in the last New Zealand Fisheries Report. You will discover too if you read the Report that the life of a fisherman is not easy. Rivers are polluted by sawdust from sawmills, fish are attacked by shags and eels, wasted by the practice of dynamiting for bait, gathered in when they are too small for use by trawling and Danish-seining. But a different angle on fishing is the subject of Miss | Redwood’s talk from 4YZ on

Wednesday, October 20, at 7.30 p.m. She will speak on "New Zealand’s Lonely Fishing Grounds." Miss Redwood is an Invercargill woman who has spent much time in original research work around Southland and the _ southern islands, especially the Auckland, Campbell and Macquarie Islands. If you are interested in fish listen to her. Also worth notice: 1YA, 8.0 p.m.: Programme by the Ariel Choir. 2YC, 8.0 p.m.: Double Concerto in A Minor (Brahms). . 3YA, 6.45 p.m.: "New Zealand Culture" (Talk). THURSDAY W ALFORD DAVIES, who was known to New Zealanders as Master of the King’s Musick, and perhaps as church

musician and professor, was something more to the English radio listener-ie was one of the first voices that "came right into the room." He was early in the field of popularising knowledge of music through the microphone, and his admirers included cabinet ministers and bishops, university dons, and _ business magnates. Walford Davies’s friend, H. C. Colles, music critic of the London Times (who was in New Zealand in 1939) completed a biography of him shortly before his own death this year, and he said of the great broadcaster: "He had a way with the babes and sucklings of music." Solemn Melody, by Walford Davies, will be heard from Station 4YA at 8.50 p.m. on Thursday, October 21. Also worth notice: 1YA, 7.15 p.m.: ""The Future of the Pacific’? (Talk). 2YA, 9.40 p.m.: 2YA Concert Orchestra, 3ZR, 8.29 p.m.: ‘"Gasses and Guesses"’ (Play). FRIDAY ‘[ HE application of the skin of a sheep just killed seems a strange remecly for lameness, yet this was one of the methods practised on Sir Walter Scott when he was a child. One of his earliest recollections, he has recorded in his diary, was. of lying on the floor wrapped in the skin of a sheep newly killed and being enticed to crawl by his grandfather. The cure unfortunately did not work, and Scott remained lame for life. However he became a sturdy man otherwisé; and one of the compensations of his illness

was the fact that he learned from his grandmother many songs and legends of the old moss-troopers and his border ancestry. Before he was ten he had collected several volumes of ballads which formed the basis of -his own later poems. Professor T. D. Adams will give readings from these poems from 4YA on Friday, October 22, at 9.33 p.m. The poems were collected first fin 1820 in 12 volumes, Also worth notice: 1YA, 7.30 p.m.: Songs by Schubert (Studio). 1ZB, 9.15 p.m.; "The Story of Madame Chiang Kai-Shek." 3YA, 8.9 p.m.: Christchurch Liedertafel. SATURDAY "HERE is a good deal of argument about whether Alfred Hill is a New Zealand composer or not-in New Zealand he has often been referred to as one, whereas in Australia he is often called "the Australian composer." But whichever he is, he is well known here, and some interest therefore attaches to 2¥C’s broadcast (8.0 p.m., Saturday, October 23) of an orchestral composition by him, "The Call of a Bird," which has been recorded by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir Adrian Boult. Mr. Hill may have intended to keep us guessing about the nationality of his favourite bird when he penned the opening phrase with a striking familiarity to a tune in Tchaikovski’s "Swan Lake," and saved up for the final bars, in a quiet reflection that follows a big orchestral climax, the effect of the clarinet imitating the European cuckoo, but he has not kept us guessing about the intentions of his music, which will please the listener’s ear with its medley of pretty ideas. Also worth notice: 1YX, 9.43 p.m.: "School of Ballet’? (Boccherini). 3YL, 8.0-10.0 p.m.: Music by Brahms. 4YZ, 8.0 p.m.: Concert by the Invercargill and Oamaru Orpheus Ladies’ Choir. SUNDAY UDOLPH FRIML, the BohemianAmerican pianist and composer, is best known for his operetta Rose Marie, though he has composed a number of melodious operettas and salon pieces, written in European idioms spiced with a pinch of jazz. Listeners will have a chance of hearing Friml speaking and playing from 3YL on Sunday, October 24, at 9.30 p.m. in the American Office of War Information programme, "America talks to Australia and New Zealand." Among other things you will hear if you listen to him will be his recollections of his wanderings in Australia and New Zealand and his reasons for wishing to return here. Also worth notice: 1YA, 8.30 p.m.: Opera ‘‘The Damnation of Faust’’ (Berlioz). 2YA, 2.0 p.m.: Septet in E Flat (Beethoven). 3YA, 3.0 p.m.: "Peter and the Wolf" (Prokofieff ). 4YA, 9.22 p.m.: Octet in F (Schubert).