THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 391, 20 December 1946, Page 4

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through Christmas Before and After PECIAL Christmas programmes are described on page 8 of this issue, but only those set down for the two days, December 24 and 25. There are several others, however, to be heard before and after those days. Charles Tazewell’s story "The Littlest Angel," for instance, in which Loretta Young takes part, is to be heard from 2YA at 9.45 p.m. on Monday, December 23. It will follow immediately after a short programme by The Chorus Gentlemen (beginning at 9.30 p.m.) of songs appropriate to the season. That same evening 3YA _ will broadcast at 8.41 p.m. "Music for the Dawn of Christmas" (Clarence B. Hall, organist, and Thomas E. West, tenor), and at 10.0 p.m.. Charles Laughton in "Mr. Pickwick’s Christmas" (which 3ZR will also broadcast at 9.40 p.m.). Professor V. E. Galway, giving his regular Masterpieces of Music talk from 4YA at 8.7 p.m. (also on the Monday) will introduce two compositions by Bach and Corelli that belong to Christmas. Two more Christmas features, to be broadcast after the twenty-fifth, from 3YA, will command attention: these are Charles Laughton’s readings from St. Luke and St. Matthew (Saturday, 8.52 p.m.), and Dr. J. C. Bradshaw’s organ recital on Sunday, December 29, at 4.30 p.m. Eight Fanfares At 7.52: p.m. on Monday, December 23, 3YA will broadcast a recording that has some -curiosity value for anycne who is interested in modern British music-"Fanfares by Famous British Composers." These eight fanfares, very short pieces averaging one minute each, were written for the Musicians’ Benevolent Fund, and were recorded by musicians from Kneller Hall (the Royal Military School of Music). The eight composers, in the order in which their fanfares will be heard, were Arthur Bliss, Sir Granville Bantock, Roger Quilter, Sir Arnold Bax, Lord Berners, Sir Walford Davies, Dorothy Howell, and Dame Ethel Smyth. The pieces are all conducted by Captain H. E. Adkins. Buy Late this Christmas ALL the shops say "Buy early," but that doesn’t prevent a lot of people finding it necessary to buy late. In one class, of course, there are those who receive a Christmas Card round about the 23rd or 24th and hurriedly post another beck in the hope that the postmark will be indistinct. In another class there are those who suddenly remember godchildren’ or nieces or nephews at the last moment, without the help of such reminders. The second class has not been forgotten by the A.C.E. people, who have prepared a talk to be heard on Monday, December 23 (from iYA,at 10.45 a.m. and from 3YA at 2.30 p.m.) called "Books for the 6-12-year-olds." The Ring of Words [N a tribute to Robert Louis Stevenson in the BBC series The Written Word (4YA, December 24, 7.40 p.m.) G. B. Stern draws a parallel between the novelist and his forebears. His father and grandfather were famous in their day as the "Lighthouse Stevensons," builders of the lofty Skerryvore and Bell Rock lights. "How could they guess," she says, "that he would end as a Lighthouse

The Programmes Stevenson jin a different sense patriarch of a dark island tribe in the Pacific, and a famous author with strength and influence to champion the oppressed?" Stevenson himself provides as good a comment as any on his own written words: Bright is the ring of words When the right man rings them, Fair the fall of songs When the singer sings them. Still they are carolled and saidOn wings they are carriedAfter the singer is dead And the maker buried. Chinese Fantasy F you like your history with little foundation of fact, we suggest that you listen to "A Princess In Tartary," from 2YA at 7.30 p.m. on Saturday, December 28. It is a BBC feature, produced by Peter Cresswell. There were strange doings, it seems, at the court of China, many, many years ago. The Emperor was saddled with a lachrymose wife, and a loquacious parrot who was

no respecter of persons, even of Emperors. His (the Emperor’s) daughter had married the great Khan of Tartary, who was so busy fighting wars that he could not remember if he was married or not. In fact, things had come to a pretty pass, and there’s no knowing what would have happened if a Wandering Italian by the name of Marco Polo hadn’t turned up and _= straightened things out. Which all goes to show that explorers have their uses, even though this one, like the other characters in the story, bursts into song at the least provocat.on. Coevals RLANDO GIBBONS and Robert Jones, the two Elizabethan composers were, as 1YA says in its programme for Christmas Day, contemporaries. A very reputable American cyclopedia, the Cyclopedia of Music and Musicians, flies right in the face of this comforting assertion by declaring that Robert Jones lived from 1485 until 1535, but the fact is that Robert Jones (who was a Welshman) and Orlando Gibbons (who came from Cambridge) both lived at the end of the 16th Century and the beginning of the 17th. Jones- wrote some very attractive songs with lute accompaniment, and 16 madrigals; and Gibbons wrote a great quantity of Church music, 20 madrigals, some music for stringed instruments, and about 40 keyboard pieces. He was at one time organist in the Chapel Royal, at another, organist at Westminster Abbey, and he conducted the music for the funeral of James I in 1625. At 7.40 p.m. on Christmas Day, from 1YA, Olga Burton (soprano)

and Owen Jensen (piano) will present music by Jones and Gibbons in their series They Were Contemporaries. Moliere on Doctors [RE DOCTOR IN SPITE OF HIMSELF, Moliére’s delightful little comedy about a woodcutter who was cudgelled until prudence made him admit he was a doctor, is to heard from 3ZR Greymouth at 9.35 p.m. on Sunday, December 29. The medical profession of the 17th Century was more than once the butt of Moliére’s satire and Le Meédecin Malgré Lui was a first-rate vehicle for that satire-and for some unabashed slapstick with simple country characters. And this (put into the mouth of Sganarel himself; who had to play the doctor) was Moliére’s opinion of the medicine of his time: "’Tis the best trade of all. . .. A shoemaker can’t spoil a scrap of leather in making a pair of shoes, but’ he’s obliged to pay sauce for it, when here we may spoil a man without costing one anything, The blunders are not ours; the fault’s always in him that dies. In short, the good of this profession is, that amongst the dead there is an honesty, a discretion the greatest in the world; you never find ’em complain of the physician that killed ’em," Another Strauss ‘THE "Right Away" Polka, which 3YA will broadcast at 7.30 p.m. on Saturday, December 28, is a dance composed by Eduard Strauss, the younger brother of the younger Johann (who wrote the best-known Strauss waltzes). Eduard was born in Vienna in 1835, and lived to the ripe age of 81. He started conducting when he was 27, and took over his brother Johann’s job at St. Petersburg three years later. His orchestra had been together for 78 years when he disbanded it in New York in 1902, and he died in Vienna in 1916. Altogether he wrote 318 dances, and this polka has been orchestrated by Walter Goehr and recorded by the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Dr. Malcolm Sargent conducting.