A MERRY-GO-ROUND OF ARTISTS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 395, 17 January 1947, Page 24

A MERRY-GO-ROUND OF ARTISTS

OR eight months after she left New Zealand after her broadcast tour last January, Dorothy Helmrich, Australian soprano and founder of CEMA, toured England, Scotland and Wales at the invitation of the British Council. She is now touring New Zealand again, singing over the main National stations; our Auckland representative interviewed her after she had given her first recital from IYA on Sunday evening, January 5.

ISS HELMRICH §$and Frederick Page, who is her accompanist en this tour, were rehearsing at 1YA, Miss Helmrich singing very softly, Mr. Page offering alternatives for accompaniment of a song to be sung later. When they had finished Miss Helmrich swept up her music and her very gay striped nylon umbrella and said with happy confidence: "Now let’s go and find some coffee." I shook my head to Mr. Page’s procession of names: all closed for holidays. "Good heavens! How; many holidays do they have in this country?" asked Miss Helmrich as we walked back to her very temporary hotel from which she was to move in the afternoon. "And where ‘on earth am I to live for the

rest of the week?" So we called at another hotel and achieved a berth for three days; the other two of her Auckland stay she would have to spend with friends. "Well, I’m used to rushing aboutI've had a lot of it in the last year. But it doesn’t make the best atmosphere to work in." * * * Miss HELMRICH visited Great Britain primarily to see the work that is being done by the Arts Council of Great Britain (of which CEMA is the Australian equivalent) which works with a Government grant of £300,000 to distribute the arts within Britain; and by the British Council (which was originally called the British Council for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries) with a grant of two millions to send British culture abroad.

"The most striking thing is that art is quite decentralised in Britain now," Miss Helmrich said. "Everywhere I went, from Cardiff to Edinburgh, I found music or ballet or drama or exhibitions of paintings on the move. And the repertory movement is extraordinarily alive, Such excellent use is being made of the generous funds of the Arts Council and the British Council. Scholarships are being established (there is one for Aus‘tralia this year) and artists are being sent out. But perhaps the best thing of all for us is the plan to exchangea beginning is being made this year with an exhibition of paintings: one from Great Britain is to come to Australia and one from Australia is to tour Great Britain. So pretty soon we may find in Australia-and you may find in New Zealand, for the British Council is most anxious to help-that we are sharing the art of London just as the provinces in England have begun to do." Everything is Changed Before she left London Miss Helmrich made some records for the BBC. "In the old days I used to go upstairs,’ she said. "But this time I went to Oxford Street and went downstairs -down four floors, 48 feet underground to the rooms that were safe from Hitler’s bombs. It was just one of the many signs I saw of a changed London and a changed England." "Did you-find the people themselves changed?"

"Oh, very much so. I feel England has grown up. The people have come through so much suffering and have been so close for so long to calamity that they seem to me to have arrived at very real value® in their lives. Perhaps I could say they have become a more spiritual people." "And London itself?" "Everything is changed. By ten-thirty at night London might be a country village-the streets without crowds, the

restaurants mostly closed, the theatre crowds all away home. They’ve completely changed their ways: the nightlife begins at half-past six and finishes about half-past nine, ten o’clock at tae latest. Quite different, very quiet, a little subdued, that’s the way London night life is now-of course there will be the exceptions. In my eight months I saw long evening dresses just once, People ere building up their reserves; they’ve come through a long and desperate struggle and it isn’t all over yet. They don’t grumble. I was there when the bread was cut. Why don’t you complain, I asked them, because I found this really outrageous. But quite as a matter of course they explained that this was nothing in comparison with what was happening ‘over the Channel.’ You see, they feel so close to the more intense suffering of Europe that it never occurs to them to grumble. They simply keep on building up their stréngth, not using it in useless and wasteful effort. And dear me, how those New Zealand and Australian food parcels have helped them." "What would you say they most badly need or want?" "Oh sweets. ‘They crave for sweets of all kinds. When I left sweets, beautiful ones and quite a variety, were beginning to come on the market again, but in very small quantities. The ration is half a pound a month-just imagine how far that goes in chocolates! Sweets and dried fruits in parcels are the magic things. Fresh fruit was on sale on the barrows for the first time for six years when I was there. But the prices were extraordinary-25/- a pound for grapes, 8/- a pound for peaches and so on. I wanted a tiny marrow to take to friends. The price: 7/6! Perhaps the worst thing about their diet has been the lack of variety. _Monotonous starch with the cheapest kinds. of greens, vegetable tops and so on; yes, they certainly need everything that we can send them from our overflowing Australia and New Zealand." Oslo with the Lid Off For three weeks at the end of her tour Miss Helmrich was invited to Sweden and Norway to make some records and to give radio and public recitals. "All the rest of the time I was so busy organising and talking arid observing that I had no time for music, music just for itself. But now I had three wonderful weeks just for music. It was so beautiful to go back to my old haunts and my old friends in Stockholm and Oslo-and it was such a contrast to England, the lights all on, the life very gay, all the food in the world’ and all the goods in the shops, things we had forgotten ever existed. In Stockholm there was nothing very special about the studios’ and the broadcasting arrangements, rather shabby if anything. But in Oslo! It was Oslo with the lid off -Oslo out from underneath the occupation, brilliant and gay and alive and shining new everywhere. The most beautiful studios in the world, the newest and best of equipment and arrangements. Really an amazing city to see." "And after this tour you will go back to continue your work for CEMA?" "Among other things. There is now a representative of the British Council in Australia-this is really,a great triumph. Really, with scholarships and exchanges of exhibitions and artists coming out on tour the outlook is very bright indeed. I look forward to a lively merry-go-round of the artists of the world."

J.