Listening While I Work (40)

New Zealand Listener, Volume 11, Issue 276, 6 October 1944, Page 20

Listening While I Work (40)

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Materfamilias

and acted by NBS players and.recently heard on two Sunday evenings from 2YD, is the first good modern play that I have heard within the last year and a-half over the air. The NBS are to be congratulated on their enterprise in producing it and their skill in acting it. Fortunately the original Steinbeck does not need much conjuring to be transformed from novel t@ play, and fortunately also there was little change in dialogue or feeling. If at first I found the voice and acting of Colonel Lancer too harsh for my interpretation of Steinbeck, it was at least in keeping with the generally-accepted picture of a Nazi officer. And am I right, I wonder, in thinking of the dialogue between the Doctor and Mayor Orden as something of a tour de force by one actor? MOON IS DOWN, produced * * * UT why was this play, which is in itself short enough to read in an hour or less, cut into two and performed on two successive Sundays? Was it considered too heavy, or too long, or too highbrow, or too tense? I don’t want to labour this point,: but surely this was a case where the broadcast should have been completed in one session. Incidentally I missed two lines from the play, both of which seemed to me on my reading of the book to have special significance. When the homesick Lieutehant Tonder cries out "The flies have conquered the flypaper," he has said all that can be said of the German occupation of Europe. I could not be sure that the line was missed but I did not hear it. And I missed the quiet perfection of the last lines of the Steinbeck original. * * OCCASIONALLY oddities creep into. programmes. Recently to mark the occasion of the death of Sir Henry Wood we had a talk on this notable conductor. The talk was illustrated by some favourite music of Sir Henry Wood’s conducted by-Sir Henry Wood? Wrong. Eugene Ormandy. Why? you wonder. So have I, ever since. Another oddity was a recent announcement from 3YA of a programme which goes under the title The Masters in Lighter Mood. The first item was Bach’s "Christ Lay in the Bonds of Death." * * * HE new series of Winter Course talks from 2YA should be of general interest. The first on Plastics was informative and full enough of interesting matter to make the rather facetious attempts of the speaker to liven it up unnecessary. If the Man in the Street is really hungry he will eat and enjoy his bread and butter without jam. * * * WEEK-ENDS are not what they were before the war-at least not for the lover of serious music. And by the term "lover of serious music" I mean ‘the person who likes to know what is going to be played and what he wants to listen to. I also mean by serious music the best recorded music. On Saturday I miss the classical hour. On Sunday the classical hour has inroads made into it (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) from time to time by studio artists. Sunday evening goes to "the Garden of Melody," with occasionally an opera, I would not want to appear to slight our local artists, but I’m sure they would themselves admit that their performance could scarcely be compared with the recordings of some of the greatest soloists and orchestras in the world. I know that there is a demand for local artists, with constant complaints that they do not get more encouragement, but for myself I frankly and selfishly prefer the masters (and that.of course means records).