THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 369, 19 July 1946, Page 4

THINGS TO COME

| A Run Through The Programmes

Study in Madness ALTER DE LA MARE’S short story "Miss Duveen" has been adapted for broadcasting by Mary Hope Allen, of the BBC, and 3YA will broadcast it at 10.01 p.m. on Wednesday, July 24. Admirers of de la Mare’s work may well wonder how this glimpse into the mind of a crazed old woman /fared in its change to the medium of radio. Everything depended on the playing of Miss Duveen, and Mary Allen found the perfect answer to her problem by casting Margaret Rutherford for the part. As an interpreter of queer, bizarre characters, as well as in the playing of straight parts, Margaret Rutherford has a hig reputation on the stage and in the films. One of her greatest successes has been Madame Arcati, in the stage and screen versions of Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit. The Hunting of the Snark But the valley grew narrow and narrower still, And the evening got darker and colder, Till (merely from ‘nervousness, not from goodwill) They marched along shoulder to shoulder. . These lines are from one of the most sublime of all nonsense poems in. the English language, Lewis Carroll’s "The Hunting of the Snark" which the BBC has made into a radio programme, with Ralph Richardson to give full value to Carroll’s rolling words. It should be worth hearing. Station 1YA will broadcast it at 8.16 p.m. on Tuesday, July 23. How It is Done "RADIO at Your Service" is the name of a special feature written by John Reed for the NBS whieh 2YA

will broadcast at 8.28 p.m. on Friday, July 26. It is intended to dispel the idea that’ there is nothing more to our radio programmes than an announcer and a technician, a microphone and a turntable. It reviews the broad scope of radio, and by example reminds the listener how radio can bring him events as they happen and later reconstruct them, as they actually sounded. The voices of Hitler (just before the march into Austria), Churchill, and Roosevelt, will all" be heard,| and the voice of the famous Shakespearean actor of 50 years ago, Beerbohm Tree. The Water Music Suite "THERE must be very many listeners who will welcome the news that a new recording of Handel’s "Water Music" Suite has been made, and is to be broadcast from 2YA at 8.30 p.m. on Tuesday, July 23. It is by the same orchestra that made the recording by which this music is so well known to us-the Halle Orchestra — but the conductor now is’ Dr. Malcolm Sargent, and the arrangement is again that of the late Sir Hamilton Harty, who conducted the earlier recording. What we now know as Handel’s "Water Music" would possibly not be recognised by the composer as the suite he wrote. The original contained 21 movements

dl (the Harty version has 6), and it was scored for such a prodigious number of oboes, which in those days were used in the same proportions as the violins, doubling the same parts, that it is very doubtful whether any of us will ever -hear it played as it first was, whén King George I. made the players repeat it twice, so well he liked it. Requiem HE Chapter and Verse programme which 4YA will broadcast at 4.0 p.m. on Sunday, July 28, is called "Requiem." It is an unusual and moving programme. Noel Iliff, who produces the series, has included some of the great’ requiems

of literature-starting with a translation of Pericles’ "For the Fallen"; one of Shakespeare’s sonnets, not well known, and the dirge "Fear no more the heat o’ the sun" which is well known, are both included, arid so is Milton’s "Lycidas." Where the Twain Shall Meet MURIEL RICHARDS, who is to begin a series of talks on 2YA at 11.0 a.m. on Saturday, July 27, under the inviting title "West, This is East," was born on Ocean Island, spent her childhood in The Never-Never, her teens in Otago, and has travelled considerably in Europe. All this should provide her with a background of comparison in her personal account of women’s life in China,

Japan, and the Indies-which is what her series is about. She will talk about "Women in Japan," as well as "Longshaam intelligentsia" and "Singapore Memsahib." Incidentally, while ‘describing the "magic metropolis of stinks, drinks and chinks,’ as someone has called it, she may be able to explain

(following a Wellington newspaper) how it comes about that "the Singapore Y.W.C.A. is running Raffles," and what a shaam is. Muriel Richards is the wife of a well known Listener contributor, A.M.R. Scenes from Shakespeare NAPIER'S Station 2YH is to have the first broadcasts of a new BBC series called "Scenes from Shakespeare’s Plays," in which the first is based on Macbeth. We have, as we go to press, no further details about this first programme, but we know something about the later programmes and the names of the actors in them. In the episodes from King Henry the Fourth, Ralph Richardson plays Falstaff, and Laurence Olivier is the Chronicler. From The Merchant of Venice there will be the Trial Scene, with Betty Hardy as Portia, Alexander Sarner as Shylock,. and Richard Williams .as Antonio. The balcony scene and the lovers’ parting from Romeo and Juliet will have David KingWood as Romeo, and Cherry Cottrell as Juliet. In the scenes from Hamlet, Hamlet himself is not heard. Instead, he is studied. in the light of what the other characters say about him. The first of these programmes will be heard from 2YH at 7.15 p.m, on Friday, July 26.

Clementi and Schonberg Listeners are advised that Clementi’s Symphony No. 2, and the Second String Quartet in F Sharp Minor, with Soprano Voice, -by Schonberg, will bé presented from 2YC on Saturday, August 3, and not on July 20, as previously announced.