THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 336, 30 November 1945, Page 4

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The Programmes

| MONDAY HE Royal Dunedin Male Choir will celebrate its Diamond Jubilee on Monday, December 3, with a concert which is to be broadcast by 4YA. The Choir came into being first as the Liedertafel Quartette, but in 1885 it was decided to add members and form a society. In the following year ten concerts were given in conjunction with the orchestral society. In 1915 the choir changed to an English name, and in 1927 King George V. bestowed on it the title "Royal." It has three times sung to Royalty, and has a worthy record in raising funds for patriotic and benevolent purposes. It has also assisted young musicians wishing to study overseas. The jubilee concert will begin at 8.0 p.m. Also worth notice: 2YH, 7.30 p.m.: "Radar." 3YA, 9.25 p.m.: Music by Mozart. TUESDAY HERE is a proverb: "Least said, soonest mended." It applies to the kind of thing that happens from time to time in any newspaper, and there has been a great temptation to apply it to the recent occasion when we printed. an article about Elgar’s oratorio "The Dream of Gerontius" and gave the times and dates of its broadcasts, though it was not heard at those times, and if our right hand had known what our left was doing, we need not have misled our readers as we did. Still, there is a duty that overrules our bashfulness, and we now confess that Part I. of "The Dream of Gerontius" will (God and Parliament willing) be heard from 2YA at 8.0 p.m. on Tuesday, December 4. Also worth notice: 2YA, 11.0 a.m.: "Rambles with a Botanist." 4YA, 7.10 p.m.: "Stewart Island Harbours." WEDNESDAY "THERE is piquancy in the title — "Substituting Wit for Muscle" — of the talk to be given by Judith Terry from 1YA on December 5, but we are still in the dark as to what’s in store. "True Wit," wrote Mr. Pope, in one of his less acidulous moments, "is Nature to Advantage Dress’d, What Oft was Thought but Ne’er so Well Express’d." Conversely, no doubt, muscle is Nature at her Best Disclos’d, Ofttimes surmised but ne’er so well Expos’d. We may, of course, be entirely wrong in assuming that Miss Terry intends to play off Bloomsbury against Hollywood, and blue-stockings against pin-ups, in which case she is in no danger of falling be, tween two schools. All we are sure about is that the talk will be worth listening to. Also worth notice: 1YA, 8.18 p.m.: Christmas Carols. 4YA, 8.0 p.m.: Handel’s "Messiah." ~THURSDAY OR her talk in the children’s session from 2YA on December 6, Mrs. Knox Gilmer has chosen the subject, "Trees for Festivals.’ We had almost written, "The evergreen subject," for at this season of the year it is a little difficult to see the wood for the Christmastrees. True, we have a vague idea that our comrades of the Soviet Union wave branches of hawthorn blossom when they are hey-nonny-nonnying around the Red Square on May 1, but we can’t go much further than that, silviculturally speaking. But it’s a good idea and one that

could do with wider application. Think of a happy, war-free world in which trees would cast their reassuring and appropriate shade over all kinds of gatherings-the United Nation’s scientists discussing the abolition of the atomic bomb in the cool depths of a grove of labora trees, the banquet-hall at the annual bunfight of the United Automobile Workers’ Union tastefully decorated (by friends of the unionists) with bloom-laden branches of the axletree, ain-trees in pots at the annual dinner of the Jockey Club, the film indus-try-but enough. Listen to Mrs. Gilmer. Also worth notice: 2YA, 8.30 p.m.: Modern English Chamber Music. 4YA, 9.25 p.m.: Symphony No. 1 (Brahms). FRIDAY TATION 3YL is to begin a new BBC series of detective problems under the general title of "Inspector Cobbe. Remembers." The first of these, "The Oxshott Murder Case," will be heard at 8.25 p.m. on Friday, December 7. Like the others in the series (all of them specially written for radio by Mileson Horton) it provides a clue in sound which gives the criminal away, a clue, that is, that will reveal the story to the listener who listens very closely-some kind of noise that is inconsistent with something someone says. Also worth notice: 1YA, 9.44 p.m.: ‘Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks" (Strauss). 3YA, 7.30 p.m.: Romany Harp. SATURDAY : WO weeks ago we published a letter. from a correspondent in the country, who felt that rural listeners were entitled to hear Handel’s Messiah as well as city listeners, and asking that the work be broadcast by major stations this year. It so happens that in Auckland and Dunedin, at any rate, this thought was already in the heads of those who decide such matters, for the programmes printed in this issue, which were already being drawn up when that suggestion was made, show that 1YA and 4YA will broadcast their’ local productions of Messiah-1YA on Saturday, December 8, and 4YA on Wednesday, December 5. In Christchurch, the performance of Messiah on Saturday, December 8 (the same night as Auckland’s) will be broadcast by 3YL. Also worth notice: 2YC, 8.0 p.m.: Symphony No. 88 (Haydn). 4YZ, 9.30 p.m.:; Trio in D Minor (Arensky). SUNDAY HE new serial to be heard from 2YD at 9.33 p.m. on Sunday nights, replacing "Lorna Doone," is "The Green Archer," from the book by Edgar Wallace. We have consulted the expert whose job it is to know all about such matters, and he has told us, with the rather gloomy relish of one who had to listen to radio serials year in and year out, that it is "the usual Edgar Wallace; there’s a family mansion with high fences and so on... ." Now what could have given us a clearer idea? There was something more, about the Green Archer himself, who is evidently a modern Robin Hood of sorts, who operates outside the law, killing off "baddies" who operate within the law, but doing it with a bow and arrow! Also worth notice: 1YA, 2.15 p.m.: "Lovely is the Lee." 3YA, 4.0 p.m.: "Your Favourites and Mine.’*