By Their Fruits...

New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 330, 19 October 1945, Page 8

By Their Fruits...

\V HOEVER made the arrangement of "Shenandoah," as it is sung by Oscar Natzke in a new record just released, has contrived to rob the song of every trace of its lovely haunting quality, This record was the first in 2YA’s new session "I Pulled out a Plum," now heard on Friday nights. It made an inauspicious opening to a session of which something could be made if it were produced under different conditions. There ‘is not much to be said for anonymity in radio scripts when it has the effect of making genuine comment impossible, and necessitates the substitution of vague references to "English critics." ‘Perhaps it is. thought that "Gramophan" (in the character of little Jack Horner) should not indulge in straightforward statements of opinion, and that quotations from overseas critics had better be used to say the safe thing about Oscar Natzke’s voice. This is all very well, but the appeal to overseas critics, or to the anticipated acclamation of that self-opinionated body described as "thousands of listeners in New Zealand," does not really turn opinions into facts, which seemed to be what the script was aiming at. Such an aim is misguided of course. The listener likes ‘to hear a real personality making real comments even though he disagrees with ‘them. But to return to "Shenandoah"the new Natzke version is no plum, but a badly processed prune with all its true flavour dehydrated right away. Its lowest note, however, is struck at the end where Mr. Natzke introduces a most unfitting suggestion of "In Cellar Cool."