THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 393, 3 January 1947, Page 4

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The Programmes

Post-Primary Schooling PARENTS whose boy or girl will embark on a new adventure-the ‘postprimary school-in 1947-will find the answers to some of their questions in a series of four talks, So You Are Sending Your Child to Post-Primary School, to be broadcast from each of the four main stations this month. Station 1YA will start the series on Monday, January 6, at 7.15 p.m.; 4YA on Wednesday, January 8, at 7.0 p.m.; 2YA on Monday, January 13, at 7.0 p.m.; and 3YA about the middle of the month. J. D. McDonald, who has written and who will also present the talks, graduated in both arts and science from the University of New Zealand. Before he returned to school-teaching at Westport, he saw service in the R.N.Z.A.F., as an education officer. He makes a point of including in the short space of four talks those things a parent should know about postprimary schooling; and he aims at putting the child on the right path to its career. More of Heifetz ORE Heifetz records will come on the air in the programmes we print this week for January 6-12. On Monday, for instance, 2YC will broadcast at 8.0 p.m. a Brahms Trio (No. 1 B Major) which Heifetz recorded with Rubinstein and Feuermann, and on Wednesday the same station will play at 9.0 p.m. his recording of Brahms’s violin concerto (known to listeners mainly through Kreisler’s interpretation). On Thursday, three stations will be using Heifetz re-cords-1YX, a recital programme starting at 9.0 p.m.; 3YL, the Saint-Saéns Introduction and Rondo Cappriccioso at 8.32 p.m.; and 4YA the Tchaikovski violin concerto at 9.30 p.m. and there will be the Brahms Double Concerto. Frightfully | inte in case anyone has ever thought that radio stations as such have no sense of humour Station 1YA seems to have arranged to prove the contrary on Tuesday, January 7. At 7.30 p.m, on that date it offers Eugene Pini’s Tango Orchestra-a BBC programme. When that .ends there will be Grand Hotel-a BBC programme. After that (at 8.31 p.m.) there will be "Robinson Cleaver at the Organ"-a BBC programme, The third item will end at 8.43 p.m. It will be followed at once by the Western Brothers in thesitem "We're Frightfully BBC." The Speckled Band OME stories are unique and undying. Such a one is the Sherlock Holmes story "‘The Speckled Band," which the BBC has made into a radio play (to be heard from 1YA at 7.30 p.m. on Monday, January 6). For those who know the story, no description is needed. For those who do not know it a description would spoil it. What can be said, however, is what the Son of the author has himself broadcast in reply to the perennial question, "Who was the original character on whom Conan Doyle built to create Sherlock Holmes?’ According to Adrian Doyle, he was not Tom, Dick, Harry-nor was he Dr. Budd. According to Adrian, Sherlock Holmes was simply a development of Arthur Conan

Doyle himself. Adrian has said that many cases were brought to his father by the police, " ... and I can recall no single instance in which my father failed to solve the problem. He proved the innocence of a man convicted of murder; Holmes himself had no more difficult

test. . . . as for my father’s powers of deductive observations, I have never known his equal. In travelling through the capital cities of the world, one of my keenest enjoyments would be to accompany him to some principal restaurant and there listen to his quiet speculations as to the characteristics, professions, and other idiosyncrasies, all quite hidden to my eyes, of our fellow-diners. In many cases the person in question would be known to the maitre d’hdtel; and the accuracy of the deductions proved to be absolutely startling." Mystery and Imagination NCLE ARTHUR, the BBC programme which is to be heard from 3YA at 9.30 p.m. on Tuesday, January 7, is a moral fantasy by John Pudney, and is one of a new series from the BBC called Mystery and Imagination. "Uncle Arthur" himself was an elephant. At least, an elephant turned up at the front-door of Mr. and Mrs. Albion’s house and said he was their Uncle Arthur, and his arrival led to a distinct improvement in the relations of the Albions with their neighbours. It is a tribute to John Pudney’s powers of persuasion that, by the time one has listened to a few minutes of "Uncle Arthur," one accepts him as unquestionably as the Albions did. The story is an outstanding example of the kind of fantasy for radio that John Pudney writes so successfully. The Valley of the Nile E R. HARRIES, a former missionary * in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, is to ’ give three talks ,from 2YA about its people and their life. The first one, entitled "The Valley of the Nile," will be heard at 7.15 p.m. on Friday, January 10. In this talk, Mr. Harries will deal with the area as a human dwelling-place; in his second talk (a week later) he will talk about the ‘people themselves; and in the third, he will discuss their present political situation, and their aims for independence. Of the minority who

are educated, he says, the greater number feel that independence is desirable for the native people, but that it is likely: to be gained more easily by remaining attached to Britain than by being linked to Egypt. Alban Berg HEN the records of a violin concerto by the Viennese composer Alban Berg come into- the radio currency next week, there will be very few listeners who are not hearing Berg’s music for the first time; yet Berg can be said to have been one of the most important musicians of modern times. He lived from 1885 until 1935, and spent nearly the whole of his life in Vienna. He was a pupil of Arnold Schonberg, and his music owes a great deal to that teaching. His best-known works were Wozzeck, and Lulu, both operas based on existing stage plays. The Violin Concerto to be heard from 2YC at 9.0 p.m. on Saturday, January 11, and later from other stations, was begun in 1935, when Berg was already fatally ill, and also engaged on the opera Lulu. It had been suggested to him by the American violinist, Louis Krasner. After the death of a close friend, he set to with feverish activity, intending it as a requiem, but not knowing it would hé his own. He finished it in August, and died in December, after trying to finish the opera he had interrupted. The concerto was first heard in Barcelona after Berg’s death, and the soloist was Krasner, who has since played the work many times in Europe and America. He is the soloist now in this recording, with the Cleveland Orchestra (under Artur Rodzinski). About Whitby "CAPTAIN COOK’S HOME COUNTRY" is the name of a talk to be given from 2YA at 11.0 a.m. on Saturday, January 11, by Anne Marsh, an English war widow who recently spent some months in New Zealand. She will describe the art of England where Captain James Cook was brought upWhitby, in Yorkshire. Cook was born in 1728 at Marton Village, Cleveland; Yorkshire, where his father was an agricultural labourer (and later a farm bailiff). When he was 12 he was apprenticed to a haberdasher at Staithes, near Whitby, and afterwards to a firm of Whitby ship-owners, whom he served in the Norway, Baltic and Newcastle trades. The cottage where he was born was some years ago removed stone by stone and re-éerected in Australia. A Notable Hotspur OBERT SPEAIGHT, who is heard as Hotspur in the BBC series Shakespeare’s Characters, has been a leading name in the English theatre and in broadcasting for the last 20 years. His first broadcast was from Liverpool, in 1926, when he was a member of the famous Liverpool Repertory Theatre Company. Since then he has played lead in many notable broadcast plays, and in the theatre is especially noted for his Becket in Murder in the Cathedral, Jesus in The Man Born to Be King, and Hibbert in the original production of Journey’s End. Some years ago he was guest lecturer in English Literature at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, U.S.A. As one of the finest speakers of verse among British actors, he is ideally suited to play the tempestuous Hotspur, a character who runs away with every scene in which he appears. This programme will be heard from 2YA at 8.28 p.m. on Friday, January 10, and 4YA at 2.0 p.m. the following Sunday.