SYMPHONY SEASON PREPARATIONS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 400, 21 February 1947, Page 17

SYMPHONY SEASON PREPARATIONS

Another Guest Conductor Announced

ITHIN a week of its in- ‘ augural concert» on Thursday, March 6, under the baton of Andersen Tyrer, the National Orchestra of the NZBS will make its second public appearance, again in the Wellington Town Hall. This second concert will be on Wednesday, March 12. On Saturday, March 29, there will be a third, this time with Dr. Edgar Bainton as guest conductor, and Lili Kraus as_ solo pianist. . Another guest conductor announced for the 1947 season is the New Zea-land-born musician, Warwick Braithwaite. Braithwaite, who was born in 1898, went to England during the First World War, and won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music. After three years as a student, he joined a touring opera company, first as chorusmaster, and later as conductor. After a year with the British National Opera Company he was appointed by the BBC as Musical Director of its Cardiff station, and while there he conducted the Cardiff Musical Society. When the National Orchestra of Wales was founded in 1927, with the support of the BBC, Braithwaite became its conductor. In 1931 he joined the Sadler’s Wells Company as opera conductor, and stayed with them till 1940. In that year he was appointed conductor of the Scottish Orchestra. During the latter’s 1943-44 season he conducted 132 major symphony concerts and 18 children’s concerts. His views on the inclusion of women players in an orchestra are reminiscent of those recently expressed by Sir Thomas Beecham. But he does not go so far as to say that women should not be in an orchestra at all. He says that they make fine oboe players, but he is

not so sure that he likes them among the violins. He thinks they are too individualistic, and unable to sink their own personalities for , the benefit of the whole. They are more at home, he believes, in an exclusively women’s orcaestra, for though they . are splendid workersearnest, and meticulously careful-their discipline is not as good as that of men. Shortly before the outbreak of war in 1939, Warwick Braithwaite completed an _ opera, Pendragon. He has also written four overtures, a string quartet and a Symphony in E. ae re Because we did not know a great deal about it ourselves, and felt that many listeners m:ght share our ignorance, we asked two NZBS technicians to tell us how the microphones were placed for the broadcasting f an orchestral concert. Many factors, we were told, have to be taken

into consideration, to preserve balance of tone in such a broadcast. Generally three microphones are used for the orchestra itself, covering the strings, the woodwinds, and the brass. If a soloist is playing with, the orchestra, a fourth microphone is allotted to him. And, of course, there has to be one for the announcer. The orchestral microphones are suspended from the roof of the hall (and getting them suspended is just a small pare of the technician’s job) at a height

of 15 to 15 feet above the heads of the players. The relay is usually controlled from the balcony, or dress-circle, and each microphone is plugged in to an amplifier. The whole passes by _ landline to the control-room of the station which. is doing the broadcast. In the case of the National Orchestra’s debut, this will be 2YA, which will broadcast the whole concert. One technician controls the four, or five, microphones, each of which has a separate volume control. The balance of tone is finally. checked at the studio and information passed back to the relay point by’ manual telephone on a second line. In\the control room ths volume level is checked further, and amplified again before being fed by another line to the transmitter at Titahi Bay. And so the listener receives the programme. | But before all this is possible, a certain amount of testing must take place ‘ at the hall during a rehearsal. This work is complicated by the fact that the echo in an empty hall is generally severe; tests when a hall is full are far more satisfactory. In some large halls overseas, however, the acoustics are such that there is little difference between a full and empty hall. Plush seating absorbs a good deal of sound; even the clothes of the audience help to minimise echo. Technicians must vary their arrangements a little from summer to winter, for while fur coats and thick clothes appreciably dampen sound, the lighter wraps and dresses of a summer season have not quite so marked an effect. With the recent alteration and re‘decoration of the Wellington Town: Hall, acoustics are said to have improved materially from a broadcasting point of view.