What Our Commentators Say

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 365, 21 June 1946, Page 14

What Our Commentators Say

Aubade

USIC, while one is lying in bed in the morning, is a luxury, especially on a week-day..The other morning, by a combination of circumstances into which we will not go, I was able to enjoy this luxury. At least, it should. have been enjoyment. Station 2YA's music, coming from the living-room wh€re the day’s work was already in progress, was easily and, at first, pleasantly heard. Bright, but not breezy, it gave encourage ment to faint feet shrinking from the cold. Due to the eccentricities of sound. however, the announcements were an inaudible murmur. So, listening to this_ infuriatingly familiar music to which I could give no title, I was torn between an urge to go out and turn up the volume, and the alternative necessity of

racking the memory to identify the tantalising tunes. No more refined mental torture could be devised. At last memory snapped into place on the final number of the seéssion-‘"Slumber Song." is took the hint and rose.

Black Ivory

PROGRAMME titles are not always what they seem, and when I tuned in to Black Ivory from 2ZB last Thursday I quite expected to hear a musichall maestro exhibiting his virtuosity by tickling the black ivories instead of both kinds. Instead of which, naturally enough, I plunged headlong into a slave-galley in mid-Mediterranean, where the only tickling being done was by the overseer’s lash. A very potent drama, awash with pre-Churchillian blood, toil, tears, and sweat. I.emerged from the experience somewhat weakened, and prepared tuo admit that by Aristotle’s definition this was Tragedy. So that it was with a certain sense of incongruity that I heard the announcer telling me that if I wanted a really dainty bone china tea service —

I should certainly pay a visit to some. body’s Ceramics Section. This led me to muse upon the unsuitability of many commercial announcements to the programmes they sponsor. Let us have no more of this business of exclusive gown salons entertaining us with $cantilydressed South Sea belles or soap manufacturers who foist upon the unsuspecting public characters whose lives are not quite clean.

Strong Medicine

RAMA OF MEDICINE from 2ZB provides an affirmative answer to those who ask doubtingly whether any good thing can come out of a commercial station. Last week it featured the story of Nicolyk, a Belgrade doctor who stamped out a typhus epidemic in the Yugoslavian Partisan Army, and was in gratitude promoted to the rank of general: by Marshal Tito. Unfortunately [ know too little of the hero to be able to separate the kernel of truth ‘from its dramatic casing, to decide what The Lancet would accept and what reject. _

Sometimes the dramatics seem a little obvious. Tito’s henchman Pietro, sent to kidnap a German general, sounds rather too much like the kidnapper we meet in B-class theatres, but our acquaintance with the genus is limited, and for all we know a leering lisp may be typical. Marshal Tito himself, with his manner rather than manners, is as he stands ideal radio material. But to dramatise persons is comparatively easy; to dratmatise abstracts, like the struggle against disease, is harder. Dramia of Medicine has a story worth telling, and tells it well.

Beauty and the Beast

MARTIN SMITH’S series of talks * from 1ZB, This Changing Worid, promises well. His first talk was in the nature of a preliminary

survey. Things are not what they used to be; of course, they never were. Altogether it is a funny world we live in. For instance, dipping into P. Martin Smith’s talk, we find that, durine the

last 20 or 30 years, woman, the fair sex, has gone to great pains to make herself fairer. Beauty culture is now one of the

more important professions, the manufacture of cosmetics a prosperous trade. Woman, cashing in on her physical attractions, believes it pays to ddvertise. But does it? In the dear departed days of Queen Victoria, woman made herself a mystery, and was progenitive. To-day. when make-up and dress are among the fine arts-and quite respectably too--the birth-rate declines. It all depends on how you look at it, but there are many who would say that the pay-off from this advertisement is a r one. This, of course, may not be all the story; but we will leave that to Mr. Martin Smith.

The Problem Child

LISTENING to an A.C.E. talk is the nearest one can get these days to living in Cranford. The reader’s voice is soft and low, an excellent thing in woman, and one gets the impression that domesticity is in general an unhurried

and gentle occupation, redolent of the still-room rather than of the gas-stove. This is not to say that the talks are uninformative -- they are as full of nourishment as an egg is of meat, and, like the A.C.E.’s coddled egg, daintily prepared so as to be easily assimilated. But after a diet of eggs you long for a slightly underdone steak. However, the new series of A.C.E. talks just started from 2YA deal with topics closer to life in the raw than "Cooking of Egg and Cheese Dishes" or "Knitting for Exhibition Purposes." The talks on "The Problem Child" were prepared by Mrs, Calvert, assistant lecturer in Education at Otago University. I heard the first last Friday, and found it helpful and stimulating. So far, however, Mrs. Calvert is running true to A.C.E. tradition in presenting eggs that are neither particularly bad nor particularly hard-boiled.

Roast Beef Music

HE Sunday afternoon concerts being arranged by the National Broadcasting Service in conjunction with the Wellington City Council are a good thing. The first, broadcast by 2YA from the Wellington Town Hall on June 2, was a programme well chosen to counter the soporific effect of the mid-day dinner, Mozart's "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik" goes well with the savoury; there was organ music by Lawrence Haggit as a digestive, and Ken Macaulay, in some of the more popular of Tchaikovski’s songs, to add zest to the coffee. It was an attractive programme for the listener, but not so good, perhaps, for the performer. Either. he must forgo a second helping of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, or else-well, the NBS Strings in the Mozart seemed to lack sparkle, and the Tchaikovski songs did not carry that

thythmic punch that is almost their only virtue. Broadcasting from a concert-hall is a tricky business and it may have been that the acoustics were playing tricks with the ear. The Town Hall is over-large for the intimate music of the strings and, in the organ concerto by Alec Rowley, they were quite overwhelmed. Despite these comments the Programme was pleasant broadcasting and obviously much enjoyed by those in the hall. Indeed, if the applause was an indication, the audience there would agree with this commentator, that it was an auspicious start to a good idea.

Men in the Kitchen

T first I thought it a waste of brilliant talent to see Richard White’s talks, Men in the Kitchen, relegated to a series of morning sessions from 4YA., This speaker's manner is so fluent, his matter so masterly, his style so crammed with the bon mot and the epigram, that it would seem a pity not to allow more listeners to hear him, But there may be method in this apparent official madness. During the morning he addresses presumably a majority of women and these mainly housewives. Perhaps the NBS desire is to stimulate the housewife in the direction of an improvement in the culinary art. Having written these words, I envisage a deluge of letters-to-the-editor, stating that the New Zealand woman’s baking is the best in the world. Quite so, replies Mr, White, but can she contrive an omelette? The other varied dishes which, in these talks, insinuate a persuasive aroma into the listener’s kitchen will perhaps suggest to the cook in some lucky household that there are other ways of showing culinary supremacy than in the preparation and decoration of the ubiquitous sponge-cake.

Kceiia and Old Lady

PLAY from 4ZB’s Passing Parade, entitled "The Old Lady Who Smiled," promised to be different, beginning as it did with a deathbed. The author couldn’t tell us why the old lady was smiling as she died, as she didn’t have «time to explain before doing so; but her bereaved descendants thought it was because her peaceful 97 years of doing good deeds and spreading sweetness and light had entitled her to a preview of the heaven to which she was so obviously going. It just proves, readers and listeners, that you never can tell, Actually the old harridan was a cold-blooded murderess who had skipped to America after a Scottish jury had brought in a verdict of "not proven"; and it seems her story was a true one, I was disappointed when the arsenic entered the tale. Too many fictional radio murders predispose one to be callous about a true case. One wonders whether radio writers are aware that there are nine other commandments, the breaking of any one of which would form good material for a play?

In Three Bites

LISTENED right through "The Assignation," latest in 3YL’s Edgar Allan Poe series and, with the sole comment that this is a tale neither of mystery nor of imagination, I will pass on to inquire why it has been thought fit to present Poe’s stories in three instalments? The vehicle of Poe’s uncertain art is the short story, which is essentially a unit, to be told at one shudder; and serialisation, however forceful and imaginative, cannot but be an error,