THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 366, 28 June 1946, Page 4

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The Programmes

Pelorus Jack LL who take an interest in monsters of the deep (and we hope there will be more of them when pages 6 and 7 of this issue of The Listener have been read) should note that at 7.15 p.m. on Friday, July 5, a talk will be given from 3YA on New Zealand’s world-famous sub-aquatic personality, Pelorus Jack. We take it that F. Baltrop, who prepared the talks, will be telling us about the original, unless the same name has conferred on the new claimant for similar fame. Pelorus Jack 1 was a Risso’s dolphin, or Grampus Griseus, and was not, properly speaking, a fish. He was protected by an Order-in-Council in May. 1906, and it was unlawful for anyone to take him (or any of his kind) in the "waters of Cook Strait, or of the bays, sounds, and estuaries adjacent thereto." Buck Ryan on the Air HE Buck Ryan whose name appears in the programme of 3ZR Greymouth for Monday evening, July 1, is the Buck Ryan of the Daily Mirror’s popular comic strip-and his visual image shouid therefore be quite familiar to some listeners even before he comes on the air. The programme which 3ZR is to present is a BBC production, produced by Martyn C. Webster, and has already been heard by 2YD listeners. It is in six separate parts, and the first, which begins at 8.6 p.m. on July 1, is called "That Man is Dangerous." The scripts were written by Charles Monk. Melodrama ON Tuesday, July 2, 1YA’s broadcasts of the BBC series The English Theatre will have reached the session on "Melodrama," and this one has been produced by Penelope Knox. We understand it makes riotously amusing listen. ‘ing; it recalls that full-blooded melodrama which swept the English stage

during the middle and later half of the last century-that melodrama with the villain hissing through his teeth (usually called Jasper), the bold and incredibly foolish hero with the halo round his head, and the saintly heroine. Science At Your Service \VHEN they finish broadcasting the present BBC Brains Trust series, the main National stations will present a series of 26 fifteen-minute programmes, entitled Science at Your Service. Station 1YA led off with "The Southern Cross" on June 17, and 4YA starts with the thirteenth talk, "Beyond the Stratosphere," on July 9. Stations 2YA and 3YA will feature the talks on dates yet to be fixed. Listening time at 1YA is 8.29 p.m. on Mondays. This series is written and presented by Dr. Guy Harris, B.A., D.Sc., D.Ph., who made the records in Australia. He puts into simple language many of the wonders of science and research achieved by the experts through the ages. He will deal with such things as earthquakes, icebergs, volcanoes, ocean currents, and the mythical Atlantis, with excursions into the causes of thunder and lightning, and to Mars and beyond. The Wasps ‘THE orchestral Suite of incidental music written by Vaughan Williams for a Cambridge production of Aristophanes’ "The Wasps" has been recorded by the BBC Theatre Orchestra, and will be heard from 1YA at 9.38 p-m. on Friday, July 5. The Overture is already well known, but the rest of the Suite is good music, too. The Chorus, appropriate to the Athenian temper of the time, much occupied with litigation, is a chorus of wasps. There are plenty of good tunes in the Overture and in the rest of the Suite, in the style of folk-songs, but the music is not indebted to any Greek musical fragments. The March Past of the Kitchen Utensils and the Ballet and Final Tableau are particularly clever, amusing, and apposite. The Overture is much played as a concert piece, and not only in British concert halls. Fool’s Paradise NAUNTON WAYNE and Basil Radford, who are to be seen among our People in the Programmes this week, are taking part in a new BBC series, produced by Vernon Harris-one which cannot be included in any particular category. It is not a play; it is not, really, variety-though that is the BBC’s own label for it; it includes the Dance Orchestra-the BBC’s famous one conducted by Stanley Black. It is scarcely a serial. In short, it cannot be pigeonholed. What can be said about it, however, is that it is a mixture of adventure story, spy story, fooling, music, and cricket. And cricket in England, of course, entails the country, the village, and the country-house. Fool’s Paradise is heard from 2YA at 9.30 p.m. on Wednesdays.

Das Lied Von Der Erde USTAV MAHLER’S symphonic songcycle "The Song of the Earth" is to be heard from Station 2YA at 9.25 p.m, on Thursday, July 4, in the recording made at a concert performance in Vienna just over ten years ago-on May 24, 1936. Mahler wrote nine symphonies and this work, and only superstition prevented him from calling "The Song of the Earth" his tenth symphony, It is a setting of a series of Chinese poems, for contralto and tenor, and the singers in the Vienna recording are the Swedish contralto Kerstin Thorborg, and the American tenor Charles Kullmann. The conductor is Bruno Walter. Swiss Guitar "THE most beautiful songs in the world," said Bernard Gnadinger, Swiss tenor, telling us about the Swiss folk songs he will sing from 1YA studio on Saturday, July 6, at 8.4 p.m. Then he added, very fairly, "but if I were an Irish singer singing Irish songs I expect I'd say the same about them. But I do think these Swiss folk songs the best songs there are." Mr. Gnadinger has béen in New Zealand 20 years, but only a few months in Auckland and this 1$ his first broadcast from 1YA. He will play his own guitar accompaniment,