THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 345, 1 February 1946, Page 4

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The _ Programmes

MONDAY T 8.0 p.m. on Monday, February 4, Station 2YC will open its chamber music programme with some incidental music for "Venus and Adonis" by John Blow. Those of our readers who say they have never heard of Blow have the support in their ignorance of: one so esteemed as Charles Lamb, who asked: "Cannot a man live free and easy, Without admiring Pergolesi? Or thro’ the world with comfort go, That never heard of Dr. Blow?" But it is our job to make people hear of Dr. Blow, so here goes: John Blow-Born near Newark about 1648 and lived to about 60; was one of the first choirboys in the Chapel Royal after the Commonwealth; later, organist of Westminster Abbey; is thought to have taught Purcell; and finally, his compositions are "worthy of being kept in remembrance" (Percy Scholes). Also worth notice: 3YA, 9.43 p.m.: "Death and the Maiden" quartet (Schubert). 4YA, 11.15 a.m.: Plunket Shield Cricket commentary. TUESDAY HE second of Rewa Glenn’s talks from 2YA on New Zealand explorers, to be heard at 11.0 a.m. on Tuesday, February 5, will be about William Colenso, the printer from Penzance who came to New Zealand in 1834 to print Maori translations of ‘the Bible for the Church Missionary Society. Accounts of Colenso’s journeys in the North Island have some of that peculiar fascination which belongs to any vivid account of a life that has disappeared, in a land that has changed. He crossed the Ruahines in the ’40’s, gathered moa bones, collected and classified ferns, and wrote about all those things in fine, almost Bunyan-like prose. Also worth notice: 2YA, 8.0 p.m.: Symphony No. 4 (Mahler), 3YA, 9.25 p.m.: "Princess Ida.’ WEDNESDAY AS, Whitman a poet or a mountebank, the first real American or the last of the glad-hand pretenders? If you are worried about the first question, read "When -~Lilacs Last in the Doorway Bloomed." If the second troubles you, read Democratic Vistas. If you are still worried, tune in to 2YA at"11.0 a.m. on February 6 to hear what Desmond McCarthy has to say. We know what Tennyson and Emerson and Thoreau thought of Whitman, what Swinburne, began to think, and what Dr. Canby had_to say when he was here a few months ago, and we are prepared to prophesy that McCarthy is a disciple. But you had better make sur®. Also worth notice: 2YA, 8.33 p.m.: "A Trunk Full of Music." 3YA, 9.25 p.m.: Symphonie Fantastique (Berlioz). : THURSDAY STATION 2YD’s new serial, beginning at 9.20 p.m. on Thursday, February 7, will be the first serial based on one of Ngaio Marsh’s thrillers to be broadcast by the NBS. Listeners may remember the series Surfeit of Lampreys, which she wrote for radio and read herself; but this is a dramatised serial, based on one of her published thrillers,

Overture to Death. That was the one about the hate-life of the ladies of the parish, who were helping the vicar to Taise money to buy a piano but who loathed one another under their cloaks of parochial amity. But don’t wait for us to finish the story-2YD will do that in weekly instalments on Thursday nights. ' Also worth notice: 2YA, 7.15 p.m.: "The Birthday of Charles Dickens." 3YA, 8.28 p.m.: "Death Has Four Faces.’’ FRIDAY HE series of programmes on Mendelssohn and his Music which 2YD began éarly last September and finished at Christmas-time has now begun at 3YA, and the second programme will be heard at 9.25 p.m. on Friday, February 8. In the first programme (on the air this Friday, February 1) there is all the incidental music from Midsummer WNight’s Dream, and the second will contain the Piano Concerto No. 1 in G Minor, played by Ania Dorfman, the familiar Scherzo from the Octet, played by the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, and the’ aria, "Oh Rest in the Lord," sung by Marian Anderson. Also worth notice: 1YA, 9.25 p.m.: Symphony (William Walon). "s p.m.: Morart’s" Sonatas (new SATURDAY E can no longer refrain from drawing attention to the BBC programme To Town on Two Pianos, which 2YH is broadcasting at 6.0 on Saturday evenings. It is a piquant title, particularly when one tecalls the transport difficulties in Britain, and indicative, too, of that dogged determination. which has made the race what it is. We ourselves have more than once thumbed our way to the office in the wake of packed suburban buses, or been corrugated on the crossbars of bicycles. But though we haven’t yet come down to castors, don’t imagine that it can’t be done, for Arthur Young and Reginald Forsythe, having decided to go to town, certainly go, as anyone who has listened to these programmes car testify... Aliso worth notice: 2YC, 8.24 p.m.: Music by Beethoven. 3YL, 8.0 p.m.: Bach, Beethoven and Brahms. SUNDAY Now that the Sunday morning . programme "With the at be Overseas" is no more, the main National stations are revealing their hands in varying degrees in their use of the extra time. For instance, 1YA is committed to "Players and Singers" so far; 2YA is starting the BBC series Everybody’s Scrapbook; 4YA still has its cards face down; ahd of the four solutions we are at the moment most taken with 3YA’s plan to have (apparently) a weekly half-hour at 9.0 called "At the Keyboard," being a recorded piano recital, then 30 minutes of J. S. Bach, and at 10.30 an orchestral interlude. On Feb10, the pianist will be Schnabel, and the orchestra the Philadelphia. Also worth notice: 2YH, 2.0 p.m.:. "Country Calendar." 4.10 p.m-: "Orlando" (Virginia Woolf),