THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 343, 18 January 1946, Page 4

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The Programmes

"MONDAY E can imagine 3ZR’s serial listeners crowding expectantly around their radios at 7.15 p.m. on January 21 for the first instalment of the station’s new feature, "The Laughing Man." Nor could one blame them if they anticipated a new mystery story. What is there to laugh about to-day? The weather queered the Christmas holidays, and tobacco is becoming simply a fragrant memory. And, indeed, "The Laughing Man" is a mystery story, but not in that specific modern sense, being a radio version of the famous Victor Hugo novel "L’Homme Qui Rit." We might add, lest anyone doubt the radio appeal of a classic, that they will find in it enough of the macabre, the exciting, and the mysterious to satisfy even warjaded imaginations. Also worth notice: 2YA, 2.0 p.m.: Concerto for Flute and Harp "in C (Mozart). 3YA, 8.0 p.m.: Canterbury Caledonian Society Pipe Band (Studio). TUESDAY . T is a long way from the Forest of Arden to the BBC recording studios, but when Touchstone said that it was meat and drink to him to see a clown he spoke for most of us. True, his clown (and presumably his meat), isn’t necessarily ours but that is a small point. What grieves us more is that we don’t get much chance to watch clowns (in the flesh) these days. But we can hear a good comedy show if we tune in to "Cap and Bells," starring Frances Day and Naunton Wayne. The BBC recorded it and the NBS will broadcast it through 1YA at 8.0 p.m. on Tuesday, January 22. Also worth notice: 2YA, 8.0 p.m.: "Eroica’" Symphony (Beethoven). 4YA, 7.17 p.m.: BBC Farming Talk. WEDNESDAY "HERMIT'S HILL," the-play 2YD will broadcast at 9.2 p.m. on Wednesday, January 23, is a creepy thing about a hill where lived a hermit. We haven’t, listened to all of it, but so far as we heard it is about a woman who goes up the hill to visit the hermit, her father. While she is there, his radio set unkindly utters a message about a person wanted by the police; and who should that person be but the hermit’s daughter! What happens next is somes thing we haven’t yet had time to find out, but tune in to 2YD and you will hear all. Also worth notice: , 8.42 p.m.: "Suite Diabolique" (Proko3YA, $28 p.m.: Music by Holst. THURSDAY NEW recording has been issued of Elgar’s second symphony (in E Flat, Opus 63), and it will be heard from 2YA at 9.25 p.m. on Thursday, January 24. It has been made by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, under its conductor, Sir Adrian Boult. Elgar wrote his first symphony (in A flat) in 1908, and the second in 1911. The notes with the new records, which are unsigned, compare the spirit of this symphon} with Shelley’s poetry and add: "Like all true masterpieces, the symphony is not complete in itself ... it leaves something

to the imagination of the participant." The work was inscribed to the memory of King Edward VII., with the gracious approval of George V. Also worth notice: 1YX, 8.35 p.m.: Octet (Howard Ferguson). 4YA, 9.25 p.m.: Piano Concerto No. 1 (Mendelssohn). FRIDAY — ‘TRAVELLERS’ tales (real travellers, of course, not C.T.’s) are proverbially tall and just as proverbially popular; We have always suspected, for example, that the Wedding Guest was more willing to listen to the Ancient Mariner than Coleridge allowed him to appear. And think of the thousands of rapt audiences listening to modern travellers’ tales to-day in New Zealand ("I remember a Pommy sergeant at Bardia who had su¢h a thirst" etc.). But, as the very word thirst reminds us, travellers’ tales mellow with age like wine and it is the older vintages that the Rev. G. A. Naylor is drawing from in his series "Strange Adventures: Tales of Old Travellers,’ "which is being heard from 1YA. The second instalment, "Prince Lee Boo," is scheduled for broadcast on Friday, January 25, at 8.0 p.m. Also worth notice: 2YA, 11.0 a.m.: Samuel Pepys (BBC talk). 3YA, 8.32 p.m.: Organ Recital by Dr. J. C. Bradshaw. SATURDAY NTIL someone lent us a digest to tread on the train the other day we didn’t know there was supposed to have been an actual case of hypnotised singing in the Trilby-Svengali manner. We had read du Maurier’s Trilby, but had thought its plot an invention’ of the author, until we came across the story that Dr. Braid (the Manchester surgeon who first used the term hAypnotism in place of 'Mesmerism) once hypnotised a factory girl, got Jenny Lind to sing to her a very difficult aria in Italian, and then made the girl repeat the song exactly and perfectly. What all this has to do with Trilby we leave you to find out, either from the book or from the BBC programme (2YH, January 26, 3.45 p.m.). Also worth notice: 2YC, 8.19 p.m.: American composers. 3YL, 8.0 p.m.: Music by Berlioz. SUNDAY "THERE are five musicians by the name of Kohler in the International Encyclopaedia of Music and Musicians, and every one of them belonged to the 19th Century.. There was Christian, of Brunswick; Ernesto, of Austria; Ernst, of Breslau; Moritz of Altenburg; and Wilhelm, of .Wumbach. The one we happen to want at the moment is Ernesto. It was he who wrote the flute concerto which Trevor Hutton is to play from 3YA at 8.5 p.m. on January 27. Herr Kohler was born in Modena and died in Petrograd. His brief reference in the encyclopaedia reads just like that of many another near-forgotten performercomposer of his time: "He wrote about 100 flute works, including a concerto and a Concertstuck, many etudes, etc., besides the opera Ben Achmed and sev-~ eral ballets." Also worth notice: 2YC, 8.0 p.m.: Music by Dvorak. ; 4YO, "apt p.m.: "Belshazzar’s Feast" (Walton). . é ,