THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 383, 25 October 1946, Page 4

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The Programmes /

The Sparrows of London NEW series for West Coast listeners is The Sparrows of London which will start at 3ZR on Tuesday, October 29, at 4.0 p.m., and will continue for 104 episodes at the rate of three a week-on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. The Sparrows, in this con-

text, are a family of human beings whose adventures are introduced by a Cockney, the occupier of the house they live in. Their tale begins around 1900. But without hearing all the 104 episodes we hesitate to attempt ‘any further definition of the serial, which the West Coasters will no doubt discover for themselves. It is a Donovan Joyce production. A Conductor Retires FTER ten years as conductor of the Auckland Juvenile Choir and eight as conductor of the Auckland Ladies’ Choir, both of which she founded, Miss Ida Holmes will retire after the broadcast concert to be given by the Auckland Ladies’ Choir from 1YA_ on Saturday evening, November 2, She has been forced to give up her work for health reasons and will soon leave Auckland to live in the South Island. Her place as conductor of the two choirs will be taken by Mrs. Nora Bridge, who has been, during the war years, conductor of the Bognor-Regis Ladies’ Choir, Sussex, England. Mrs. Bridge will be remembered by many in Wellington as Nora Greene, a contralto who gave many solo recitals from 2YA_ before the war and who was a member of the William Renshaw quartet. Photographs of Miss Holmes and Mrs. Bridge appear on page 24. Housman arr. Somervell

ARTHUR SOMERVELL is one of the many composers who have set to music verses by A. E. Housman and his cycle of ten songs from A Shropshire Lad will be sung from 2YA at 7.35 p.m. on Thursday, October 31,, by Kenneth Ayo (photograph on Page 24). The poems set to music by Somervell are these: Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry now: When I was one-and-twenty; There. pass the Careless People; In Summertime on Bredon; The Street Sounds to the Soldiers’ tread; On the Idle Hill of Summer; White in the Moon the Long Road Lies; Think no more, Lad, Laugh, be Jolly; Into my heart an air that Kills; The Lads in their Hundreds. John Nash, Architect HIS is a picture of All Souls Church, London, dating from over 100 years ago-All Souls at the top. of London’s Regent Street (named after the "First Gentleman of Europe," the Prince Regent). The scene now is little like what it was. All Souls itself has bten hopelessly damaged by German bombing, and in the left foreground there is no longer a late 18th Century house, but the great bulk of Broadcasting House, the headquarters .of the BBC. The latest of the BBC English Architects ‘series to be heard from 4YA ‘(at 7.45 p.m. on Tuesday, October 29) deals with

John Nash, a- builder in the grand manner, and the designer of All Souls. He was the architect patronised by the Prince Regent (later George IV) who, whatever his faults as a regent and a sovereign, was one of the first men at the top of things to appreciate and preserve the best of English architecture. It was he who saved Windsor

Castle from both vandalism and decay. It was he who commissioned Nash to make Buckingham Palace what it is to-day. At the same time, it was he who commissioned ‘Nash to perpetrate that comic monstrosity in the oriental style, the Pavilion at Brighton. New Serial for 2YH HAWKE'S BAY listeners are to have a new serial from 2YH starting at 8.0 p.m. on Thursday, October 31. It is called The House that Margaret Built, and is a story of Australian pioneering days. It has previously been broadcast from Station 2YD. The scene of the first episode is an immigrant ship bound for Australia, and Margaret Storer makes her first appearance on this ship-she is born on the way out, during a storm. The captain and the ship’s doctor are both drunkards, but there is a doctor among the passengers who is able to assist the birth. The serial then follows the fortunes in Australia of the infant Margaret and her parents, and of the children of the doctor who first helped her into the world. The Way of All Gooseflesh ‘THE curse of the Bronze Lamp-the curse of the Egyptian mummy... who hasn’t heard all those stories of people coming to a sticky end through disturbing an Egyptian mummy in defiance of the curse? Do you remember, too, similar stories that gained great currency following the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamen shortly after the

last war? Ff you do, you will all the more appreciate a story of John Dickson Carr’s which is quite clearly founded on that wonderful revelation of the artistic magnificence of the later Egyptian dynasties. Naturally, though, none of the living charac.ers in the story bear any relation whatever to the real people concerned in bringing Tutankhamen to the eyes of modern men. Dickson Carr has an ability to give an entirely new twist to this old, eerie theme. It is another of the many that he has written in the series Appointment with Feaf, and will be heard from 1YA at 10.5 p.m. on Friday, November 1. Songs by Ronald Tremain FOUR songs composed by a New Zealander; Ronald Tremain, who is music master at the Feilding Agricultural High School, are to be sung from 3YA by Alison Cordery at 8.30 p.m. on Sunday, November 3: Their titles are "Tewkesbury Road," "Sweet in her Green Dell," "I Know a Bank," and "On Sidi Reszegh." The words of the last-named were written by Don McDonald, an old boy of the school where Mr. Tremain now teaches, who showed much promise as a lyric poet, but was killed shortly after Sidi Reszegh. Mr. Tremain specialised in music when he went through Christchurch Teachers’ Training College, and graduated Bach-. elor of Music at Canterbury University College. His composition "Air, Variations, and Fugue for Piano" was recently performed at a local composers’ concert at Canterbury College by Wainwright Morgan, another composer whose work has been presented from 3YA by Alison Cordery.