THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 12, Issue 304, 20 April 1945, Page 4

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The Programmes

MONDAY [_ISTENERS who have heard some of the BBC’s recorded programmes about the English countryside know that in this style of radio presentation the BBC can be very good indeed. Station 3YA will broadcast at 7.30 p.m. on Monday, April 23, a programme in the BBC series "Country Calendar," produced by the owner of one of the voices best known to overseas listeners — Georgie Henschel. The series was planned to give in verse, prose and music, a sound picture of the real heart of rural England, month by month. So far only one instalment has reached New Zealand, but more are on the way, and they will be heard later. Also worth notice: 3YA, 9.25 p.m.:. Haydn’s Sonatas. 4YA, 8.0 p.m.: Royal Dunedin Male Choir. TUESDAY WO programmes of lighter music that have been popular with wartime English listeners will be heard 4rom 1YA on Tuesday evening, April 24. The Queen’s Hall Light Orchestra, which carries on with first-class light music, though its original home was burnt out in an air raid, plays music from such popular composers as Eric Coates, Haydn Wood, Edward German and Dvorak, with waltzes by Strauss and Lehar, and arrangements by Clive Richardson of modern tunes. Its conductor is Charles Williams. This orchestra will be heard at 8.0 p.m. Another BBC programme to be heard at 8.34 p.m. is called "The Army, the Navy and the Air Force at the Theatre Organ." Sandy McPherson comes into it, not so much to play himself (though he does), but to introduce organists who are now serving in the Forces. Also worth notice: 2YA, 9.40 p.m.: Symphony No. 4 (Beethoven). 3YL, 8.0 p.m.: Bach and Mozart, WEDNESDAY IN Wednesday, April 25, Station 2YD will begin a new series of NBS plays by the English writer Francis Burbridge, who specialises in the sophisticated type of detective fiction. The series is called "And Anthony Sherwood Laughed’"-Sherwood being the central figure, a detective by calling, a kind of latter-day Raffles or Robin Hood who takes the law into his own hands with philanthropic intent. The plays are a set of six, but they do not constitute a serial-each one may be heard on its own. The first, which will be heard at 9.2 p.m. on Wednesday, April 25, called "The Man with the Perfect Alibi." Also worth notice: 2YC, 8.36 p.m.: Music by Liszt. 3YL, 6.30 p.m.: For the Violin Student. ° THURSDAY ¥ Page 21 of this issue you will find a photograph of that irresistible halfwit Tommy Handley, sampling the milk that has been produced on his farm in "one of the remotest villages of rural England." It'appears that the milk is not at all to Farmer Handley’s liking. Nevertheless the rustic life is one that often appeals to "That Man," and his "Itma" session often finds him clowning in the role of the country bumpkin. In

one such half-hour he had just returned from spending a fortnight with the Fleet, and tried to dress up ‘his Land Girls as Wrens and give orders from the bridge of the pigsty. Station 2YD will broadcast, at 8.5 p.m. on Thursday, April 26, another of these mad half-hours in which Mr. Handley is farmer, huntsman, and what-have-you. Also worth notice: 2YA, 2.0 p.m.: Music by the Bachs. 4YA, 9.25 p.m.: Symphony No. 2 (Beet hoven). FRIDAY "TDRAVO,’ the BBC programme to be heard from 3YA at 8.43 p.m. on Friday, April 27, is hot war. reportingnot merely front-line records, but records made beyond the front line; and the photo on Page 21 shows the man who made them-Denis Johnston, a BBC War Reporter. A recording such as this does in sound what the authentic photograph does visually — it gives you a genuine picture of what the reporter himself actually saw and heard when he was mixing with the Yugoslav partisans in the interval between their lightning raids on the German occupying forces- . pictures like that of a twelve-year-old boy armed with a Bren gun and two antitank hand grenades, or of the girl of sixteen with a rifle. Also worth notice: 2YC, 9.0 p.m.: Music by Beethoven. 4YA, 3.30 p.m.: "Tapiola’"’ (Sibelius). SATURDAY "\NJEW JUDGMENT" is the general title of a series produced for the BBC by Stephen Potter, selected ones of which are brought to us by the London Transcription Service. The whole point of the series is to bring a new judgment to bear on some of the great figures of English literature. The one that 1YA will broadcast at 9.25 p.m. on Saturday, April 28, deals with Charles Dickens, and is done by the man whom some people regard as that great novelist’s successor, J. B. Priestley. Priestley revives in radio form the character and the atmosphere of Dickens’ novels, bee sides giving a judical portrait in miniae ture of the man himself and his cone tribution to the literature of our Empire, Also worth notice: 2YC, 8.0 p.m.: Music by Dvorak. 3YL, 8.0 p.m.: Royal Christchurch Musical Society. SUNDAY ISTENERS to 4YA on Sunday evening, April 29, may hear a piece of music by a modern English composer, Alan Rawsthorne, who is not well known here. Rawsthorne is 40, and comes from Lancashire. The Theme and Variations for Two Violins which 4YA will broadcast at 9.46 p.m. is one of his principal works, and was produced at the 1938 Festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music in London. Its nine variations bear names that indicate their various styles, strict and free; the third ("Cancrizzante") is "crabwise" canon, or one in which the tune is heard against a reversed version of itself. The seventh is heard over an obstinate repeated bass, and the eighth is another canon. Also worth notice: 2YC, 8.0 p.m.: Wagner Excerpts. 3YA, 2.0 p.m.: Literature of Exile,