THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 385, 8 November 1946, Page 4

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The Programmes

Life with ENSA NEW series of talks about the theatre in England during the war will start from 3ZR Greymouth on Thursday, November 14, at 2.46 p.m. They are written by Helen McDonell, a Greymouth girl who went to England in 1936 to study at the Central School of Speech Training and Dramatic Art, London. Following her studies, she toured many British schools with the actor, Michael Martin-Harvey, in Shakespearean and religious plays. She played in repertory seasons in Manchester, York (the Theatre Royal) and Oxford (the Playhouse), and later took the part of Kay in the London run of ,J. B. Priestley’s "Time and the Conways," During the war she played in various ENSA companies, having many interesting and varied experiences, which form the subject matter of her present talks. Since the war ended, she has married an Australian Rhodes Scholar who is on the staff of the University of Western Australia. She is at present spending a holiday in New Zealand before going to her home in Perth. Her photograph appears this week among People in the Programmes. A Gogol Play OGOL’S tragic-comedy The Overcoat has been translated from the Russian and adapted for broadcasting by the BBC, and will be heard from 3ZR Greymou‘h at 8.22 p.m. on Thursday, November 14. Walter Hudd plays the pathetic little hero, Akaky. His full name and title, you may remember, were Akaky Akayevitch Bashmatchkin Perpetual Titular Councillor, but those high-sound-ing words only meant that he was a copying clerk in a Government office. And he was so poor that his shabby overcoat made him the butt of his fellow councillors-or clerks., But one day Akaky was persuaded into buying a new overcoat, and this unheard of extravagance had the most far-reaching consequences. Howard Rose, who produces the play, has brought out all the pathos and comedy in this little gem. Concerto in B Flat Minor T may have been a wartime grievance only, or it may still be going on, but we seem to remember having seen a lot of tired complaints in English papers over the last few years, on the ground that Tchaikovski, the Russian composer, had written another piano concerto, and a perfectly good one. That happens to be true, and the release of a brand new recording of it, made by Benno Moisei- witch and the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra is a reminder of its existence. If anybodY here is bored with the Tchaikovski Concerto, then here is No. ‘2 in G, Opus 44 (written three years after the one and only). Station 4YA will join the stations now snapping it up so eagerly, with a full-length broadcast at 9.30 pat on Thursday, November 14. Defective Detective OE ON THE TRAIL," a new comedy series which 2YA will begin broadcasting at 7.30 p.m.-on Monday, November 11, is a satire on G-Man stuff,

a hilarious account of the adventures of "G-man Joe" who is always being given "one last chance" to do a job properly. Somehow he has no tact, and blusters his way from one mess into anothercontriving always to make matters worse than they were before. The series (it is not a serial) is an Australian production and will be heard from 2YA each week at the same time. Horse Play NEW play from the production studios of the NZBS will. be heard from 2YD at 9.2 p.m. on Wednesday, November 13-Mazil, by Maxwell Grey, an Australian writer. It is a story of two Arabs; one of them owns a fine horse;

the other breaks the Tenth Commandment. They are friends, but the coveter is so determined to own the horse. Mazil that, when its owner refuses to sell, he plots to get it by a trick. The owner, fiding in the desert, meets a beggar, and lets him ride the horse. The beggar turns out to be the other Arab in disguise. He steals the horse, but that is not the end of the tale, which we leave 2YD to unfold for those who would know the rest. Strange Appointment ‘THE play which 3YA will broadcast at 9.22. p.m. on Sunday, November 17, The Man Who Phoned, gained one of the four third prizes in the 1946 NZBS radio play competition, of which the results were announced last May. It was written by E. N. Taylor, of Wellington, and its ingredients, without any connecting statements, are these: a returned soldier’s strange appointment with a man who phoned-his wife's puzzlement -the mysterious visitor-"You may not recognise me but I was beside you many times-over there"-and the morning light, which brought the answer to the mystery. Auckland’s Singing Children Tuesday this week (November 5) listeners to 1ZM and 1YA will have the pleasure, for the fifth successive year, of hearing the broadcast from the Auckland Town Hall of the Primary Schools’ Music Festival held under the auspices of the Auckland Headmas‘ers’ Association. Professor H. Hollinrake, professor of music at Auckland University College, will conduct the massed choirs (2,000 voices), and Mr. H. C. Luscombe, lecturer in music at the Auckland Teachers’ Training College, will conduct the grouped choirs (500 voices). The programme will include folk songs, classical songs and modern songs in unison or two-part singing. From 1.30 to 2.0 p.m. Station 1ZM will

broadcast this concert and at 2 o'clock 1YA wil lItake over and continue the broadcast till the end of the concert at 2.30. The Archduke Trio OR years now our acquaintance with Beethoven’s best known trio, known as "The Archduke" (Opus 97, in B flat) has depended on a very good but also very old recording made by Cortot, Thibaud and Casals. A new recording was made in England during the recent war, by Solomon and Henry Holst (violin) and Anthony Pini (cello). Henry Holst was until recently professor of the violin at the Royal Manchester Collége of Music (and has now been succeeded by Thomas Matthews). Anthony Pini is a brother of Eugene, who has the-Tango Orchestra. The new recording will be heard from 3YA at 9.35 p.m. on Monday, November 11. Gabriel Dupont "HERE are five or six Duponts in any good encyclopedia of music and musicians, but "Gabriel (1878-1914) is the one who wrote the overture with which 1YX will open its evening programme at 8.0 p.m. on Monday, November 11. "The Comedy of the Washtub" (or "La Farce du Cuvier’) is a comic opera which Dupont wrote before the first world war, and it was first done in Brussels in 1912. Dupont was a Frenchman, and was born at Caen. In his ‘twenties he wrote some pretty good music and seemed heading: for a brilliant future, but he was attacked by tuberculosis, and had-a continuous struggle with ill-health. His last completed work was another opera (his fourth) called Antar, but rehearsals of it were interrupted by preparations for a matter of more urgency at the time, and Dupont’s end came all the more quickly. He died the day before the war actually began-on August