THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 378, 20 September 1946, Page 4

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The Programmes

Canterbury Music Festival URING the week for which we publish programmes in this issue, Christchurch will be the centre of the second Canterbury Music Festival, now an annual event. As the "Also Worth Notice" section on this page shows, there will be five full-length evening broadcasts all from Station 3YA, so that the whole province will have the opportunity to hear the concerts that are to be broadcast. On the Monday, there is chamber music; on the Wednesday, a concert by the 3YA_ orchestra. (augmented), with Alison Cordery (soprano) and Ernest Empson (pianist-who will | play Mendelssohn’s G Minor Concerto). Thursday’s concert will be contributed to by the Laurian Club String Orchestra, and three Christchurch choirs, the Liederkranzchen, the Orpheus Choir, and the Liedertafel. Friday brings a programme featuring country choral societies from Temuka, Rangiora, Ashburton, and Methven. And on Saturday there is Haydn’s oratorio The Creation, in which the two larger Christchurch Choirs will combine, and will be accompanied by the 3YA Orchestra. Walton's "Scapino" Overture NEW composition by William Wal"ton, or rather one that is new to us here, is his Scapino Overture, written in 1941, and now here on gramophone records. Station 1YX will broadcast it at 8.0 p.m. on Monday, September 23, and 2YH Napier will broadcast it at 8.0 p.m. on Saturday, September. 28. It is ‘subtitled "a comedy overture," and the score is prefaced (like the overture "Portsmouth Point") by a picture-an old etching from Jacques Callot’s Balli di Stessania (1622). It is a portrait of Scapino who was the rascally servant of the Commedia dell Arte-the mediaeval Italian comedy in which only the plot was written down and the actors made the dialogue. Scapino always planned his masters’ escapades, especially their amorous ones. The overture is a musical portrait of his character. It is scored for large orchestra, and the recording is by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Frederick Stock. Bach’s 48

TATION 2YA, which has been broadcasting half-an-hour of music by J. S. Bach at 7.30 p.m. on Tuesdays for some time now, will on ‘Tuesday, September 24, begin to broadcast the 48 Preludes and Fugues which make up the two books of The Well-Tempered Clavier. The collection of preludes and fugues known by this name was issued in two parts, about 20 years apart. The first amounted to a sort of public manifesto by Bach of his adoption of the "equal temperament" system of tuning keyboard instruments, which is now general, but was not in Bach’s time. He wrote a prelude and fugue in the major and minor mode of every key, to demonstrate that a clavier tuned in equal temperament could be played satisfac‘torily in any key. Some years later he wrote 24 more, and two sets are familiarly known among pianists as "The 48." Equal temperament, although it was known long before Bach used it, was

not completely adopted by instrument makers for a long time. Broadwood pianos did not have it until 1846. English Architects REPLACING the English Eccentrics programmes, Station 2YH Napier will begin a new BBC series, English Architects, at 6.0 p.m. on Sunday, September 29. There are five programmes in the series, of which ‘the first will deal

with Sir Christopher Wren. It tells the history of Wren, and brings in such other notable characters as Samuel Pepys and Nell Gwynn, as well as "Old Rowley" himself (as Charles II. was irreverently known to his subjects). The only thing lacking from it, the BBC tells us, is E. C. Bentley’s clerihew from his Biography for Beginners: Sir Christopher Wren Said, "I am going to dine with some men. If anybody calls Say I am designing St. Paul’s." Later programmes in the same series will tell listeners about Inigo Jones, the brothers Adam, John Nash, and Sir John Vanbrugh. Women in the East HE recorded talks by Muriel Richards under the title, West, This is East, which have been broadcast by 2YA, are to be heard now from 3YA at 2.30 p.m. on Wednesday afternoons starting on September 25. Her series is a personal account of women’s life in China, Japan and the Indies, and the first talk deals with the women of Japan -middle-class women, women students, and the geisha girls. Muriel Richards herself was born on Ocean Island, spent her childhood in the Australian NeverNever, her ‘teens in Otago, and has

travelled a’ good deal, so that she has some background for comparison of the customs and conditions she discusses. Know Your Utopia OR those who often speak of Utopia, but haven’t found out for themselves the full meaning of the word, the Rev. G. A. Naylor’s readings to be given from 1YA at 8.35 p.m. on Friday, September 27, will serve a useful purpose. Mr. Naylor is at present giving a series of readings collectively called Lands of Fantasy, and the second programme is selected from Sir Thomas More’s bestknown work, a political essay written originally in Latin in 1515 and 1516 and translated into English 35 years later. It might be some surprise to some people, who speak of Utopia much as they speak of the currently more popular Shangri La, to learn that the general law there was a form of communism. There was a national educational

system available to both sexes, and complete freedom of religion. Music From Canada RAMOPHONE records have been made by an orchestra and conductor who are new to us in this Dominion, though Australia has seen and heard the conductor. . This is the Te@ronto Symphony Orchestra, which has been conducted since 1931 by Sir Ernest MacMillan." The orchestra has recorded a suite of short pieces by William Byrd (taken from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book and orchestrated by Gordon Jacob), and a short Serenade by Haydn. Sir Ernest MacMillan, unlike most orchestral conductors in North America, is a native there. He was born in Mimico, Ontario, in 1893, and studied music in London. He was knighted for his service to music in 1935, and he visited Australia as a guest conductér some months ago. The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, source of the suite to be broadcast by 2YH at 9.44 p.m. on Sunday, September 29, is a collection of early 17th Century keyboard music, named after Viscount Fitzwilliam, who bequeathed it to Carphetdgn Vanveratty in 1816. Five-Part Bach ACH’S five-part motet, "Jesu, Priceless Treasure," one of the six beautiful motets from the final period at Leipsig, will be sung under Professor H. Hollinrake’s direction by a chorus of 60 voices from the Auckland University College Music Club from 1YA on Wednesday, September 25, at 7.30 p.m. This motet is in 11 sections, six of them based on the melody and words of the chorale and the other five, alternating, based on words from the Epistle to the Romans and set in an_ elaborate contrapuntal and often fugal style.