RADIO'S INFLUENCE ON MUSIC

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 360, 17 May 1946, Page 32

RADIO'S INFLUENCE ON MUSIC

for the growth of interest in music since the first world war, although in its early days it discouraged people from making music for themselves-this is the opinion of Dr. Edgar Bainton, who has just retired from the position of Director of the New South Wales Conservatorium of Music which he has held for 12 years. In a press interview on June 6, 1934, the day he took up the position of Director, Dr, Bainton said: "I am a great believer in broadcasting as a means of musical education. I intend to do all in is largely responsible

my power to link up the N.S.W. Conservatorium with the broadcasting system of the country." The link that he achieved was not only through regular ABC broadcasts of Conservatorium concerts-for the first time-but also in providing his teachers and students as a nucleus of the ABC’s Sydney Symphony Orchestra. He him-

self reinforced the link with the ABC by sitting on its Music Advisory Committee, and conducting its orchestras in each State as celebrity subscription concerts. t Dr. Bainton won public recognition at an amazingly early age. At 21 be became Professor of Pianoforte and Composition at the Conservatoire of Music, Newcastle-on-Tyne; at 32 he was its principal, and conductor of the Newcastle Philharmonic Orchestra. He ‘had his first music lesson at the age of four. His father was a Congregational Minister and all his father’s brothers were clergymen, as was his mother’s brother, and his own elder brother. Internment in Germany While he was in Germany in 1914 on a vacation from the Newcastle-on-Tyne Conservatoire, war broke out, and he was interned at Ruhleban, the racecourse outside Berlin, Another internee in the camp was Sir Ernest MacMillan, the Canadian conductor. During the years at Newcastle-on-Tyne Dr. Bainton made frequent appearances as conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonic, the Halle in Manchester, and orchestras in Belfast, Newcastle-on-Tyne and other large provincial cities. He also spent a great part of those years in composition. Before Sunrise, a ~ symphony for contralto solo and orchestra, from Swinburne’s "Songs Before Sunrise," won a Carnegie Trust Award in 1917, In 1920 he won this award again with his Fantasia for Piano and Orchestra. He has also written piano solos, songs, works for chorus and orchestra, chamber music, and two operas — The Pearl Tree, based on an Indian legend, and The Crier by Night, based on the Old English verse-play by Gordon Bottomley, who was a _ personal friend of Dr. Bainton. According to the weekly news bulletin of the ABC, Dr. Bainton is to come to New Zealand next manth for a six months’ examination and adjudication tour.