"All Right at a Distance"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 12, Issue 298, 9 March 1945, Page 8

"All Right at a Distance"

EING of part-Scottish descent, 1 can truthfully say with the writer of "Hail Caledonia" that "the blood leaps in my veins when I hear the bagpipes’ strains"; hence I listened with a glow of inward pride to the skirling of the Dunedin Pipe Band from 4YA’s studio. I had to admit, sadky enough, that the pipes don’t come over the air very well. To appreciate them, you*have to be one of a crowd watching the kilts swing past, or hearing perhaps one solitary piper play on a still evening in the countryside, with himself unseen some half-a-mile away. On the radio, the glamour vanishes, It’s like one’s attitude to the circus elephant; he’s a wonderfully stirring fellow, but you don’t want him in your drawing-room. * * * ART of this programme was a group of traditional Scottish songs by Dorothy Bell, but the loveliest of them, "Turn Ye to Me," can hardly be said to be typical, as it has more of a Hebridean mood, with its moaning seamews and repeated "Ho-fo" refrain. In Dunedin we have more Scottish Concerts than we know what to do with, and they all exhibit a strange similarity. While performers stick to -traditional airs all is well, but unfortunately audiences seem to prefer "The Star o’ Robbie Burns," "Grannie’s Hieland Hame," and others of the same type, a nauseatingly sentimental and cheap modern equivalent of those glorious tunes which are the heritage of the true Scot. On the same evening from 4YO we had an Octet by Ferguson, who at least sounds a Scot; this is the sort of thing local Scottish Societies could well encourage their members to listen to. Really good modern music is being composed in Scotland, although to judge by the programmes

one would never suspect it. By way of a postscript, may I ask why in the name of goodness did the Pipe Band include a Maori Canoe Song in its programme? Surely nothing can be imagined more incongruous than the works of Alfred Hill rendered on the pipes!