Records at Random

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 353, 29 March 1946, Page 12

Records at Random

N a certain Wednesday evening I imagine the staff of 4YO must have been unwittingly responsible for a great deal of heart-burning and hair-tearing

among its listeners. Imagine the feelings of a listener who wants to hear the Beethoven programme as advertised. He tunes in, expecting the first bars of the Eighth Symphony. Instead, he hears the final bars of an overture which is not mentioned on the programme at all. He verifies the date and time again; no, there is no mistake, except that the programme has begun ten minutes too soon, apparently. Anyhow, the Symphony will be next. But no; the announcer says that we will now hear a Piano Concerto, and sure enough here it is-except for a false start of some twenty bars or so, which, after an apology, we hear repeated. The recording was old and parts of it were very blurred; pauses between records were too long; but it finally came to an end. The Beethoven Violin Concerto which was down as the next item on the programme, however, was

also jettisoned in favour of something else, and it was not until 9 o’clock that we had the programme as scheduled. This was Haydn’s "Farewell" Symphony, which made up for the previous erratic hour. The announcer couldn’t resist explaining the title, of course; how Haydn’s musicians, at the performance, packed up and left one by one, as a gentle reminder to their patron that salaries and holidays were long overdue. Personally, I find the erratic behaviour of the recordings listed above a strong indication that these well-worn American symphony programmes have outstayed. their welcome, and are in need of a holiday, too,