Listening While I Work (42)

New Zealand Listener, Volume 11, Issue 281, 10 November 1944, Page 20

Listening While I Work (42)

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Materfamilias

Y comments of a few weeks back have not, as I expected, offended the husbands, wives, mothers, and fathers of studio artists, but the artists themselves. I would like to make it clear that I did not at any time say that there should be. no studio performances. I recognise that in the interests of the encouragement of art, quite apart from the very special interest that a performance of local artists must naturally have, studio performers must have their opportunity to appear before the wider public of the air. / What especially occasioned my remarks was the programme changes that have, over. the last months, given over a large proportion of week-end time to studio performances. This does not greatly affect the housewife who can listen on her week-day afternoons and who may be able to plan her evening for listening. But it does affect the many workers who cannot listen during the day except at week-ends and who may not even have many evenings free from overtime, committees, meetings, etc. It was on behalf of the worker who wishes to listen in his leisure that I was, believe me, very humbly raising my pen. % * * M USICUS says quite. justifiably that "the crowded halls of the last chamber music concerts. prove that the audience is very keen to hear music per(continued on next page)

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formed by local artists and is tired of tinned music." To that I would add two remarks: first, that the most crowded concerts that I have recently attended were by artists or combinations of artists whom I have not heard recently over the air-the Dorothy Davies, Marie Vandewart, Erica Schorss recital; the Maurice Clare and Frederick Page concert; and recitals by Paul Schramm. Second, Musicus fails to realise that to the average listener music that comes out of a radio is just as much tinned as that which comes out of a gramophone. Except that there may not be the hitches which unfortunately occur from time to time with the changing of records, there is not much to show that a studio performance is less tinned than the recorded programmes, unless it be the quality of the performance. The listener has not. the stimulating atmosphere of the concert room, the enthusiasm or criticism of his fellow listeners, and the enjoyment that comes from watching a musician actually at work. As Musicus has rightly pointed out, there is plenty to indicate that a surplus of tinned music has stimulated rather than killed interest in public performances. But a public performance stands or falls by its audience. If the standard is not up to the level which the audience demands, the concert will be a flop. A danger with studio performances is the fact that the audience isn’t there to hoot. But before I rouse more indignation, let me hasten to add that I do not suggest that any performance that I have heard over the air would merit hoots. I know that the selection of artists is made with the greatest care to maintain a high standard of performance, and I have realised and appreciated that from time to time interesting and seldom-heard works are performed which listeners might not otherwise hear. But let me still plead for a good hour or two hours on Sundays of records of — world-famous artists playing music by the greatest composers and let us have the features of the programmes listed and not lumped together, as sometimes they are, as "recordings." %* x te HE short detective story lends itself to radio dramatisation: if it is well done I greatly prefer it to the serial. Inspector French’s Cases have the additional interest of allowing the listener to find the clues himself. So far the clues have not been hard to find, but the mere fact that there is a problem ta be solved is a more healthy stimulant than the grim details and artificial excitement that ginger up the improbabilities of the average serial. For a school child who expects a short bedtime story, provided he is not allergic to the detective type of thrills, these should be quite an entertaining 15 minutes. * * * ADIO play writers revel in space-time theories. It must be temptingly easy to pop characters in and out of the present, the past, and the future wh there are no practical problems of stage presentation. But to throw them into a space-time bubble which was nowhere in particular (2YC, Sunday, October 15) stretches even the patient listener’s gullibility. . Besides, the couple who slipped so surprisingly into the Bubble almost immediately slipped out of it again with such ease that I could not help wondering where the. point was. Perhaps it would have pricked. the bubble if there had been one.: