THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 402, 7 March 1947, Page 4

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The Programmes

Lili Kraus Concerts ILI KRAUS, who has just begun" her second tour of the main centres. under contract to the NZBS, is to give two concerts in Christchurch next week, both of which will be broadcast in their entirety. The first, on Tuesday evening, March 11, will consist of four Beethoven sonatas-in D Minor (Opus 31, No, 2), in C Major (the "Waldstein," Opus 53), in C Minor (the "Pathetique," Opus 13) and in E Major (Opus 109). This is the same programme which Mme, Kraus has already played in Auckland and Wellington at concerts arranged to benefit CORSO appeals for help for China, but it has not been broadcast before. Twoeevenings later (Thursday, March 13) Lili Kraus will again be heard from the Civic Theatre. This programme will consist of Schumann’s Carnaval (Opus 9), Mozart’s Fantasy in C Minor (K.396), a Peasant Dance by Bela Bartok, and Brahms’s Rhapsody in G Minor, and (after the interval, when the news will be broadcast) Schubert’s Sonata in A Major (posthumous). Ro-mance of Journalism W HEN a young man, whose school essays have been flattered with a "V.G." by the English master, decides to earn his living at journalism, he starts, as often as not, on the staff of a country newspaper. And there, where filling-up is more important than condensation, he can become graphic about the fancy costumes worn by the ladies at the church bazaar, lyrical over the weekly stock sale, and solemnly factual in his account of the borough council’s discussion of a new sewerage plan. When he has done all these things, plus a few other little odds-and-ends to fit the bottom of columns one to eight, he may, if he’s lucky, call it a day. So our eyebrows lifted at an item in 4YA’s evening programme for Wednesday, March 12. It is Good-night, Ladies, the Adventures of a Young Journalist, and it is timed for 8.28 p.m. Any young journalist would be delighted if it could tell him how this one managed to get free of the office before that hour. Fugal Fun HE term fugue, to the musically unini‘iated, has a funereal sound, suggesting something like a lament. But it can be, and often is, the exact opposite. It means, literally, flight. The idea is that in composition of this sort ezch "voice" as it enters chases the preceding one, which flies before it. Bach's fugues, for instance, are in two, three, four, and occasionally five parts or voices, following each other up and down the musical hills and dales. Station 3YA will perform a service for those beginners in musical appreciation who listen in on Sunday; March 16, at 9.47 p.m., for it will present a session called Fugues are Fun. This will serve to discount the oynical definition of a fugue as a musical form in which the parts come in one by one, and the audience goes out likewise. Gold is Where You Lose It ; YER since we saw (and heard) Clark Gable and Loretta Young in The Call of the Wild (and even more since Stabilisation pegged the cost of living

just outside our reach), we have dreamed about the Klondike where a man’s second-best friend is his dog, where the weekly grubstake is limited only by the number of wee canvas bags you have brought to stow the nuggets in, and where H.M. Commissioner of Inland Revenue is no more than a name in small type in a year-old newspaper. In this fantasy-life, which is our last refuge from the Slings and Arrows of. Outrageous Fortune, we hoped to be confirmed by the Rev. Hugh Graham, whose series of talks, Tales of the Klondike, begins this Friday (March 7) from 3YA. The first talk, however, is entitled "The Fan Tan Trail," and the second, on

March 14, "An Old Prospector"’-which suggests that Mr. Graham is going to confine himself to the seamy side of life in the Diggings, and not the come-up-and-see-me side so thoroughly worked over by Mr. Gable. Listening time is 7.15 p.m.

Man of Parts \/ HEN Bransby Williams visited New Zealand several years ago his adept character studies ("Scrooge" was one of his favourites) and his deftness at makeup made him a pattern for elocutionists. With others-among them Will Kings, | Milton Hayes and Mel. B. Spurr-he-lifted the art of the reciter to a high entertainment standard and to-day his recordings are as popular as ever. Bransby Williams started life as a teataster, then became a wallpaper designer, and while papering parlours, decided to be a boy preacher. When he turned to vaudeville he gave imitations of famous actors in favourite roles, including Irving as Matthias in The Bells, and Charles Wyndham as David Garrick. His Dickens character impersona-tions-Micawber, Peggotty, Bill Sikes, Pecksniff, Sydney’ Carton, Mrs. Gamp, and a host of others-are-always worth listening to. If you tune in to the For My Lady session at 1YA at 10.20 a.m. on Thursday, March 13, you will hear more about Bransby Williams in the Popular Entertainers series, Radio in South Africa [ARLY last year Major René S. Caprara, Director-General of the South African Broadcasting Corporation, came to New Zealand to study our broadcasting system and to find out something about the practical workings of Parliamentary broadcasting. He, in turn, told us a few things about the SABC: that, for instance, it has two

sets of programmes, A in English, and B in Afrikaans, on the assumption that not all listeners are bi-lingual (99 per cent. of Afrikaaners speak English, but not all English-speaking South Africans can speak Afrikaans). Major Caprara, of course, spoke to us from one side of the microphone. What South African transmissions sound like to a listener with a New Zealand background will be described in a recorded talk by Vivienne Blamires when, from 2YA at 11.0 a.m. on Wednesday, March 12, she will speak about music and broadcasting in the Union. Two-Way Traffic Wanted "]{OME LIFE-DOES IT _ SATISFY?" the A.C.E, talk which 4YA is to broadcast at 10.0 a.m. this coming Friday (March 7) is the first talk for 1947 in the A.C.E.’s weekly series on the home and its interests. But it is not solely for that reason that we draw attention to it. The query in this title is more than a device of style; the talk itself is a succession of questions. For since the aim of the A.C.E. is to help the woman in the home it must know first in what way to help-what specific problems are harassing the housewife, what she needs in the way of expert information, what interests occupy her precious moments of spare time. This Friday’s talk, therefore, is an appeal for a two-way traffic in information and ideas. The A.C.E. already has an extensive correspondence with women all over New Zealand, but the more it has the better will it fulfil its task of helping women, both in town and country, to provide the ideal home-life for their husbands and children. \