THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 408, 18 April 1947, Page 4

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The Programmes

Hall or Home? HE point was made in our columns recently by Dr. Finlay that it is one ‘experience to hear an orchestra in a public hall and another experience altogether to hear it in the privacy of one’s home. It was even suggested by Dr. Finlay that, since the National Orchestra is. "primarily a broadcasting one," it should, and does, think more of its unseen audience than of those present with it in the flesh. Well, Dr. Finlay may be right or wrong on that point so far as’ the orchestra is concerned, but so far as the. listening experience goes, most people like it both ways: living-presence performances when they can get them, fireside listening when they can’t. We are certain in any case that Dunedin will fill its Town Hall on Thursday, April 24, before 8.0 p.m., when the orchestra makes its first appearance there under Andersen Tyrer; but the rest of the Dominion will still be free to listen at home, and tens of thousands will. Putting It Across HOSE who have only read Douglas Cresswell’s talks on our early sheep stations have missed something that it is impossible to convey in print. To begin with, these talks are not history and not just flights of fancy, but something balanced nicely between those extremes. Because they can be recorded, they can be preserved and _ repeated without much loss of effect, but any attempt to report them reveals that they cease to exist with the effort it takes to produce them. In other words, they are manner as much as matter, the ex"pression of an artist and not of a mere chronicler, and it would be interesting to know, if there were any way of finding out, how much of Cresswell will be remembered in a few years and how much of Acland, say, will be forgotten. Cresswell’s next talk will deal with the earliest settlers in the Mackenzie Country, and will be heard from 2YA at 7.0 p.m. on Thursday, April 24. On the Sound-Track | HE programme "Music from British Films" which is to be broadcast by 4YA at 8.14 p.m. on Saturday, April 26, might perhaps have been more properly entitled "Music for British Films." For among all the evidence which is accumulating to prove that the British cinema is very much alive to-day, one of the most telling facts is the lively interest which leading composers are taking in it. Whereas it was once the general practice to use almost any old music as a "background" to the movies ("Hearts and Flowers," for romance, the "Light Cavalry Overture" for action), it is now increasingly the custom in Britain for film scores to be written expressly for their purpose by such composers as William Walton (Henry V), Vaughan Williams (49th Parallel), Wiilliam Alwyn (The Rake’s Progress), Georges Auric (Caesar and Cleopatra), Alan Rawsthorne (The Captive Heart) and, among others, Arnold Bax, Arthur Bliss, Benjamin, Britten, Richard Addinsell, Clifton Parker, Guy Warrack, and Elizabeth Lutyens. Many of these composers and their screen works were represented in a "concert of film music"

conducted by Muir Matheson, which was a highlight of the fairly recent Prague Film Festival, one of the leading Czech newspapers commenting, "In England the musical part of the film is given to outstanding composers and these artists have a thorough knowledge of musical creation for films." Among the items included in 4YA’s programme on April 26 is some of the music for The Rake’s Progress, and listeners will be able to decide . for themselves whether they agree with the view of a writer in The Penguin Fiim Review that this is the outstanding sound-track ‘of recent months, as well as with his further opinion that "Alwyn’s music would probably be useless when heard apart from the film." . Invictus E are constantly in receipt of intimations, if not of the immortality at least of the invincible vitality of Homo sapiens. We recall that in 1938-39 the prophets proclaimed that another European war would mark the end of Western civilisation, yet 1947 finds the West quarrelling as vigorously and violently

as ever. No Circumstance, however fell its clutch, can apparently keep a good man down, no Chance can bludgeon hard enough to make us more than slightly punch-drunk, Consider, for example, the A.C.E, talk to be heard from 1YA, 2YH, and 4YZ next Monday forenoon (and from 3ZR next Wednesday). The title is "Consider Growing Your Own Vegetables." If consideration, like a guardian angel would come and whip the offending aphides from our Eden, growing our own would be less an act of faith than it has been so far. Yet we will listen. Come the four corners of the insect world in arms (and legs) against us, with all the legions of Mycology, and we shall shock them .... if the A.C.E. can only supply us with the ammunition. High-Spirited ‘Cellist "| HAVE two children. Neither is a musical genius. Jepha, my daughter of nine, plays the piano. Joram, my son of seven, plays cowboys and Indians, And as for jazz, it’s like a glass of beer. It is not music. It is an extra-curricular activity," so Gregor Piatigorsky, Russian ‘cellist, is reported to have told a Canadian reporter in a high-spirited interview. Gregor is a humorist. He has a Barrymore profile and a distinguished mdne of leonine hair, and he hates being called handsome. His phobia started when a Boston sculptress named him as one of the 10 men she’d like to sculpt. "Ever since then," he said, "I dare not show myself outside except that I be smartly groomed and shaved. What a

reputation to keep up!" He has two ’cellos (a 250 years old Stradivarius and an Italian Montagnana made in 1737). He calls the Italian model his "sleeping beauty," because for one whole century it stayed unused in a corner of an ancient English castle. One of these will be heard from 2YC on Saturday, April 26, at 8.32 p.m., when Piatigorsky plays Concerto in A Minor, Opus 129 (Schumann). Scot Who Went South ILLIAM MURRAY, first Earl of Mansfield-the Great Figure of the Bar whose career will be described in Richard Singer’s round Churchillian sentences from 1YA on Sunday, April 27, at 2.16 p.m.-was a Scot who took the road south. Not the first, or the last to do so, but the most eminent of his day. He was born at Scone, in Perthshire, and though he didn’t reach such an exalted position as the Stone of Destiny, which went south from the same parish some 400-odd years before him, he became one of the most conspicuous figures in the parliamentary history of his time, and one of its greatest legal authorities. He was, successively, head of the Bar, Solicitor-General, AttorneyGeneral, Leader of the House of Commons, Chief Justice, and Speaker jof the House of Lords. During his térm as Chief Justice (which lasted from 1756 until his death in 1793) he became, by a singular arrangement, a member of the Cabinet and held office there through various administrations for about 15 years* To-day he is chiefly remembered as a judge, and as an authority on commercial law, but he was also a good scholar and mixed with the best literary society of his day. Alexander Pope was one of his intimate friends-an advantage not to be despised by anyone, however exalted.