THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 326, 21 September 1945, Page 4

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The Programmes

| MONDAY HE Canterbury Music Festival, which will be held in Christchurch from September 22 to September 29 will begin and end with a performance by the Christchurch Operatic Society of the popular Verdi opera I] Trovatore (The Troubadour). Its plot is far too complicated to be even sketched here, but there is nothing hard to follow in its collection of magnificent and expressive tunes. And if the plot could be ridiculed, 90 years of parody, inadequate singing, and barrel-organ travesties have no whit diminished the popularity of the music. The second performance of I/ Trovatore on Monday, September 24, will be broadcast complete by 3YA, and the 9.0 p.m. news on this occasion will be heard from 3YL. Also worth notice: 1YA, 8.0 p.m.: "Pageant of Music." 2YA, 10.25 a.m.: "Peacetime London." TUESDAY "FASHION THE FANTASTIC" is the sub-title of the Winter Course Talk to be given by Mrs. E. Macnee in the series "Our Homes and Our Leisure" at 7.15 p.m. on Tuesday, September 25. We can think of plenty of the more grotesque instances of fantastic fashion that have paraded before us, more particularly in peacetime, but Mrs. Macnee’s subject presumably will not be ludicrous hats or outlandish hairdo’s so much as some of the passing conventions we submit to in the privacy of our homes. For, as we have only lately been told in some other Winter Course Talks, some of the things we do with all the naturalness imaginable would look pretty funny if only "wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us To see oursels as others see us"! And no doubt Mrs. Macnee, who belongs to Dunedin, has studied her subject with this in mind. Also worth notice; 2YA, 8.0 p.m.: "A London Symphony" (Vaughan-Williams). 3YL, 8.0 p.m.: Canterbury Music Festival. WEDNESDAY A TALK on "Life in the High Country" in 3YA’s Winter Course series will be given at 6.45 p.m. on Wednesday, September 26, by John Pascoe, a man with a reputation for knowing a lot. about it. Mr. Pascoe’s pen and camera have already told us a good deal about the picturesque and the romantic that is to be found in ‘the back country by anyone who will go theré and meet the people on their own terms-the musterers (never call them "shepherds"), the "packie" (half cook, half handyman), the shearers, the managers, and their visitors too, the trampers and painters or rare swaggers. It will be good to have this opportunity to hear him talking about it in person. Also worth notice: 1YX, 94 p.m.: Scarlatti Sonatas. 2YA, 8.30 p.m.: "Recital for Two." THURSDAY ODEN’S MOTOR WORKS BAND, of Sandbach, Cheshire, is England’s most successful contesting band of the century, having won the Crystal Palace Championship eight times, including two "hat tricks.’ The band began its career in 1900 with second-hand instru-

ments worth only £30 altogether (the cost of one cornet these days) and rehearsed in a stable. Now it is world famous. The BBC has sent out a programme by the band (which will be heard from 4YA at 2.0 p.m. on Thursday, September 27) containing works by Ireland, Denis Wright, and Greenwood. The conductor is Fred Mortimer, who has three of his sons in the band. Also worth notice: 2YA, 8.0 p.m.: NBS Quartet. 3YL, 8.30 p.m.: Music*by Scarlatti. FRIDAY (CURIOSITY is said to have killed a cat. Whether it deals as severely as that with a young Englishman seeking Spanish adventure in Santiago we do not know. But we may tell our readers that, having wined and dined well, a young man is intrigued by an open door at midnight. He pops in; the door snaps shut behind him. There is a struggle in darkness and when a light is turned on he hears gruesome-sounding laughter and exclaims, in a startled manner, "Great Scott, have I stepped right into the Middle Ages?" With this little piece of bait to tempt them, listeners may go fishing for adventurous developments if they tune in to 2YA at 3.0 p.m. on Friday, September 28, when they will hear "Santiago Escapade." Also worth notice: 1YA, 8.0 p.m.: "Contrasts in Literature." 3YA, 8.0 p.m.: Canterbury Music Festival. SATURDAY | "\{USIC BY VINCENT D’INDY" from 3YL at 8.20 p.m. on Saturday, September 29, will contain two orchestral works by the French composer which -are both variations on a theme, though neither is so in the ordinary sense. The "Symphony for Orchestra and Piano on a French Mountain Song" is a kind of fantasia in three movements on a tune from the Cevennes, and is the com‘poser’s most popular work. His "Istar Variations," which will also be heard, constitute a tone poem based on an ancient Babylonian poem "Istar’s Descent Into Hades," and it is unusual in that the theme only appears in its entirety at the end, instead of at the beginning. Each variation represents one of the seven stages of Istar’s disrobing at the gates of the "immutable land." Also worth notice: 2YC, 9.1 p.m.: Symphony No. 2 (Mahler). 4YZ, 9.25 p.m.: Music by Purcell. SUNDAY HOMAS DE QUINCEY’S Confessions of an Opium Eater is one of the strangest confessions ever made by a human being, an immortal work, and remarkable for both honesty and readability. V. C. Clinton Baddeley, of the BBC, has produced a radio programme based on the "Confessions" which will be heard from 3YA at 3.48 p.m. on Sunday, September 30. It gives not only a picture of a man and his addiction, but also of the times in which he lived, times of industrial slave labour when de Quincey defended opium ‘as being the cheapest anodyne to enable the unfor- — to endure the misery of their ives. Also worth notic: 1YA, cl sae "The Daughters of the Late Colonel. 2YA, 9.50 p.m.: "Song of Norway."