THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 364, 14 June 1946, Page 4

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The Programmes

The Stuff to Give the Troops BE Army edition of the BBC's "Merry-Go-Round" will be heard from 2YA at 833 pm. on Monday, June 17, and we print among People in the Programmes this week a photograph of the gitl who will introduce this cheery show -Louise Gainsborough. Others taking part are Ramon St. Clair, Arthur Haynes, Len Martin, and Charlie Chester, with Eric Robinson conducting the "Blue Rockets" Dance Orchestra, Further editions for the forces will follow on the next three Mondays. "The Beggar's Opera" SOUTHLAND listeners will hear a pro- ' gramme on English Opera at 7.30 p.m. on Monday, June 17-another in Jenifer Wayne’s series on "The English Theatre." They will hear how and why, and all about "The Beggar’s Opera,"

which was written by John Gay in 1728 to satirise the newly-imported Italian opera, which was usurping the English theatre. The voices that will be heard in this production will represent players in The Beggar's Opera, as well as historical characters such as Addison and Stelle. The illustration we reproduce here was a programme cover for a recent London revival of The Beggar’s Opera. Talks on Music R. EDGAR BAINTON, who recently retired after 12 years as Director of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, atrived in New Zealand on June 11, and on Tuesday, June 18, he will give the first of a series of lecture-recitals from 2YA. It will begin at 8.0 p.m., and Dr. Bainton will discuss early 18th Century music, playing examples of Bach and Scarlatti (who were both born in 1685), and Couperin (who was a Frenchman, born in 1668). Dr. Bainton will later cover the subsequent development of music in eight more talks, to be heard

at 8.0 pm. on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Talk No. 2 (Thursday, June 20), and No. 3 (Sunday, June 23), will both be on Bach; No. 4, on Haydn and Mogart; No. 5, Mozart and Beethoven; No. 6, later Beethoven and Schubert; No. 7, Schumann and Brahms, and their contemporaries; No. 8, the late 19th and early 20th Centuries; No. 9, Scriabin, John Ireland, and Debussy. Verse and Prose "THREE mote Chapter and Verse programmes are to be heard from National stations this week. On Wednesday, June 19, 3YA will broadcast one called "I have seen old Ships," which includes Masefield’s "Cargoes," Elroy Flecker’s "The Old Ships," Victoria Sackville-West’s "Sailing Ships," and

Lawrence Binyon’s "From the Sirens." This programme will begin at 10.0 p.m. Then on Sunday, June 23, 1YA wiil present a programme on "The Book of Job" at 4.45:p.m.; and 4YA will present one on "The Land" at 4.16 p.m. This latter also includes a poem by Victoria Sackville-West, and other excerpts and quotations from yerse and prose dealing with England’s soil and the men who have tilled it. A photograph of Noel Iliff who produces these programmes will be found on page 25 of this issue.

What is Typical? [F you were far away in some foreign country, what would remind you most vividly of New Zealand? Would it be a thought of rain on the clematis, a billy boiling by the roadside in the Waiowexa Gorge, the crowds round the race track at Ellerslie, or the world’s record for oyster-eating as chalked up in a hotei at Bluff? Climb to the heights of Roslyn and look at Dunedin or glance backward to Christchurch from the Sign of the Takahe, and an ocean of red roofs confronts you. From Durie Hill in Wanganui or from Mount Eden the prospect is much the same. These are some of the thoughts prefacing a series of six talks on "What is Typical of New Zealand? A Ramble Round," by J. D. McDonald, of Westport. The series will start at 7.15 p.m. on Thursday, June 20, at 2YA, and will be heard at fortnightly intervals. New 2YD Serial JOURNALIST meets with an accident. He becomes a cripple for life, and his paper gives him a pension of £2

a week, also for life. But this pension, hardly princely, because he had served his board of directors very well, seems to need a little expansion, so the journalist accepts a job with a very shady character-to the horror of his family. And that’s part of the synopsis of To Have and to Hold, a new 2YD serial. By now listeners will know more about it, for it started on May 31, and is to be heard at 9.20 p.m. on Fridays. Goldberg Variations : SOME of J. S. Bach’s Goldberg Varia. tions will be played from 4YA on Sunday, June 23, starting at 3.56 p.m., in a two piano arrangement by Rheinberger. The pianists will be Mary Martin and Oliver Campbell, and they will play the theme and the first 13 varia- _ tions. The variations were written to be played by Gottlieb Goldberg for his employer Count von Kayserling, during the Count’s sleepless nights. As they were written for a harpsichord with tw» manual keyboards, it is difficult to play them on one piano, and Rheinberger’s arrangement for two pianos is one of the alternatives to not playing them at all. A new recording was made not long ago in America by the ae Wanda Landowska. "A Source of Irritation" STACY AUMONIER is still recognised as one of the great masters of the short story with "a sting in the tale." The BBC’s producer Felix Felton, a man with a genius in interpreting for radio the work of the short story writer, has adapted for radio Aumonier’s "A Source of Irritation," and it will be heard from 1YA at 2.0 p.m. on Sunday, June 23. The story is a truthful and entirely unsoured reflection of that amazing stability of the rustic mind in the midst of hectic events,