Broken Music

New Zealand Listener, Volume 12, Issue 295, 16 February 1945, Page 8

Broken Music

HIS practice of breaking programmes up into, roughly, ten-minute episodes assumes that the listener will be bored with too much of anything. But why should anyone be bored with, say, a whole hour of piano, or singing, or violin, or orchestra? The singing enthusiast who heard "Wenlock Edge" from 4YA would probably switch to 3YA’s song recital while the great Chaconne of Bach was being magnificently played by Winifred Gardner, and the piano addict who enjoyed Busoni’s thunderous arrangement would undoubtedly find himself in strange waters when it was followed by some Walton songs. It would be too late for him to hear the Schumann Quintet from 2YA, even if he could hear Wellington at all plainly, which is problem--atical, so he might be reduced to hearing, for the hundredth time or so, our old friend Rachmaninoff in C sharp minor. After that, ‘presumably, both he and vocal enthusiast, being highbrows, would retire to bed, unless they both like Dvorak. I know we can’t please all of the people all of the time, and that it

would require a dozen stations to each centre to provide an entire evening’s programme for each type of listener; but may I plead for more of the longer works, performed in their entirety and in their original form, rather than "selections" and "arrangements" and "fantasias upon" which I am sure please none of the people.