THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 401, 28 February 1947, Page 4

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The Programmes

Uplift for West-Coasters STARTING th.s Sunday, March 2, end continuing at the same time each week, Station 3ZR Greymouth will run a series called Favourite Movements from Major Works. It- will be on the air at 9.30 am. The series has been planned to give 3ZR’s listeners an opportunity to make further acquaintance with separate movements from symphonies and concertos and so on, which have been introduced to the popular audience through the cinema-and in some cases, radio serials (whose favourites are various things of Tchaikovski, and Liszt's Les Preludes). The programme will kick off with "Fate ,Knocking at the Door," and will continue with, for example, "Goin’ Home" (or the Largo from MDvorak’s "New World" Symphony) and the first movement of Grieg’s Piano Concerto (for which words have been found, but at the moment we forget them). Ewe Fairs EAT and dust, or cold rain and mud, have little or no effect on the attendance at a New Zealand ewe fa.-r. It’s a big day (or days) for the farmer, for its after-effects will be found in his bank balance at the end of the year. From early in the morning the drovers hustle the stock along, through the races and into the pens. The barking of dogs can be heard paddocks away, and -over all is the, drover’s peculiar staccato whoop that defies representation in print. Then the auctioneers appear, to descr.be the lots for the buyers and sellers leaning over the rails. And any city man Who visualises an audience of rustics chewing straws round the barriers is taking a dim view (if we may borrow from Air Force phraseology), for to-day it’s far more likely to be a pencil or fountain-pen held in the teeth and ready for the notebook. And when the last ewe has been trucked to its ‘destination, the fair is still mews, a handy top'c of conversatiog for days to come. More about these big occasions in the countryman’s life will be heard in the series of Farmers’ mid-day talks from 3YA, on Monday, March 3, at 12.35 p.m., when Richard Bethell’s subject will be "Ewe Fairs." No Wild Surmise OR most of us England is that undiscover’d country from whose bourn no Rhodes Scholar returns (to paraphrase a line from Shakespeare’s Ibid). For that reason, we commend to our read- ers’ attention a talk by Hector Bolitho, "My Discovery of England," which 4YA is to broadcast at 1.0 p.m. on Monday, March 3. The title will, of course, remind some of Stephen Leacock who, observing that increasing numbers of English writers were rediscovering America at 25 cents a word, decided to adjust the balance of trade by discovering England at the same space-ratés. That he found the business of discovery complicated by mundane problems (his London itinerary read: (1) Go to Bank, (2) Buy a shrt, (3) National Gallery, (4) Razor blades, (5) Tower of London, (6) Soap), simply arose from the fact that he was S‘ephen Leacock. Mr. Bolitho is not Stephen Leacock, but listeners will find his recollections entertaining none-the-less. And they won't cost 25 cents a word.

For Whom the Toll Bills OW many times, when the telephone bell goes, have you said, superfluously, "Are you there?" And do you realise that you would not be able to do even that if Alexander Graham Bell

had not rung it years ago when he _ constructed the first working telephone? He was the inventor, too, of the photophone (an instrument for transmitting sound

by vibrations in a beam of light), and of phonographic apparatus. The hard-of-hearing, too, may be grateful to him, for he founded the American Association to Promote the Teaching of Speech to the Deaf. He died in Nova Scotia on August 2, 1922, but he was born on March 3, 1847, and March 3 is the date on wh'ch listeners will hear a centenary talk on him, prepared by Alexander Protheroe. Listen in at 7.15 p.m. to 2YA. ;

! D. H. Lawrence Story ‘Two short plays, "The Picture" and "The Rock.ng Horse Winner," make up the programme in the BBC series Mystery and Imagination, to be heard from 1YA at 7.30 p.m. on Monday, March 3. The theme of "The Picture" is full of possibilities and the author, Gwendoline Foyle, and Felix Felton, who produces, have made the most of them. Yet it is quite a s'mple ideaa picture whose subject varies with the person who looks at it. Some of the images are what one might expect them to be, but that isn’t the case with others, and the repercussions they have on the characters: in the play make good 1 stening. "The Rocking Horse Winner," adapted from the story by D, H. Lawrence and produced by Wilfred Grantham, is an unusual and, in its way, disturbing, study of the effect on a child of a family’s obsession with money.

Beethoven from One to Nine ae eer 4YZ Invercargill has arranged to broadcast the nine symphonies of Beethoven in sequence, starting on Wednesday of next week, March 5. "We hope," says a letter from 4YZ advising us of this, "that by presenting

them in. their. chronological order, those who are very keen on this type of music will have their wishes gratified." The first Symphony (which is in C Major, and has been recorded by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Toscanini) will be heard at 8.0 p.m. on Wednesday, March 5, and the others will follow weekly, leading to the Ninth (the Choral) Symphony on April 30. Great Defender | . HOMAS ERSKINE, probably the greatest advocate the English Bar has ever seen, started out as a midshipman, but a chance meeting with Lord Mansfield decided him to try the law. His first brief, owing to the chance of hs having been a sailor, was for Baillie, accused of libel in a pamphlet on the management of, the Greenwich hospital. His successful speech captivated both audience and court, and his fortune was made. Three years later, in 1781, he defended Lord George Gordon with a speech which gave the deathblow to the doc’rine of constructive treason. More successes followed, but hs greatest came when he was counsel for John Stockdale, a bookseller charged with seditious libel in publishing a pamphlet in favour of Warren Hastings. Three years after that he brought down opposition, alike from friends and foes, by defending Thomas Paine, author of The Rights of Man, declaring that an advocate had no right, by refusing a brief, to convert himself into a judge. More about Thomas Erskine will be heard from 1YA on Sunday, March 9, at 2.17 p.m., in a talk in the Great Figures of the Bar series by Richard Singer.