THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 419, 4 July 1947, Page 4

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The Programmes

Report on France SOME interesting observations on life ~ and affairs in France to-day will be made by Stanley Bond in his talk "People and Politics in France" from 2YA on July 8, at 7.15 p.m. Mr. Bond interrupted a journalistic career in New Zealand to join the forces, and served with the 2nd N.Z.E.F. in Greece. He was later taken prisoner of war. After the war he took his discharge in England, where he joined the staff of the Daily Express. He represented his paper at the Paris Conference and was able to watch closely the tangle of political events in France, and the accompanying reactions of the people. Returning to New Zealand recently, he travelled via France, Switzerland, Italy and Greece and took the opportunity to re-visit familiar places and to note the changes which had taken place. Mr. Bond will give a further talk a fortnight later, on "The Tragedy of Greece," which will interest ex-2nd N.Z.E.F. members and should bring a measure of consolation to anyone who considers life in New Zealand to-day unduly hard (see also page Be & & Touring Soprano -NETTIE MACKAY, a. soprano who is making a tour of both the YA and ZB stations, started her singing career when she won first prize for the Scottish folk song at the Wellington Competitions in 1936. She joined the staff of 2ZB as a receptionist in 1940, and later studied singing at the Sydney Conservatorium under Dorothy Helmrich. She is the daughter of the late Andrew Fleming, who, as "Andra," conducted 2ZB’s Scottish session for several years, and her voice was often heard in this session. She will sing from 3YA this Friday, July 4, from 3ZB on Sunday, July 6, and from 2YA on July 8, 9, and 11. Early Handel FOR those listeners who have a special affection for the works of Handel, one of 2YA’s evening programmes next week should be of especial interest, comprising as it does two sonatas from Opus 1. The Opus 1, composed about 1725, consists of twelve sonatas, two for oboe, three for violin, three for the German flute, and four for English flute or treble recorder, and the two which will be broadcast are Sonata in C Major for English Flute and Harpsichord (No. 7), and Sonata in D Major for Violin and Harpsichord (No, 13). Presented by Zillah and Ronald Castle at 8.0 p.m. on July 10, the two sonatas will be played -on the instruments for which they were written and will therefore be, in the words of the programme title, "Handel’s Music as He Heard It." Tok or Tawk? ISTENERS to 3YA will hear the last of Professor Wall’s Byways of Language talks at 7.15 p.m. on Friday, July 11, when the subject will be "Phonetic Spelling: Its Chances of Suc~ , cess." Those listeners who have been following the arguments of A. R. D. ‘Fairburn in The Listener, and who have the additional advantage of an acquaintance with such diverse literary personalities as Mr. George Bernard Shaw, Hyman Kaplan, and Smith Minor, may be forgiven if they think that this par- \' ticular byway is a no-exit route. What

would be the basis for phonetic spelling — Mr. Fairburn’s "recognisable norm," or somebody elge’s? Not that we deny the immense advantages that some kind of phonetic spelling would provide. We are reminded of them every time we write down fuschia-sorry, fuchsia. See what we mean? So far the horrific alternative of battling typographically with the International Phonetic Script, or something approximately like it, has hardened our hearts, and we doubt if even Professor Wall could soften them, if he wanted to. Hiawatha AD Samuel Coleridge-Taylor lived longer he would probably have given the world far more tc remember him by than the trilogy The Song of Hiawatha which remains as the chief monument to his undoubted genius as a composer and the sincerity of his artistic principles. The first part he conceived and largely composed as a pupil, the second he wrote the following year as a commissioned work for a provincial music festival, and the third, only two years after the first, for that most austere and conservative institution, the Royal Albert Choral Society. His skill as a musician is revealed nowhere better than in his use of orchestral effect and change of rhythm to break up and colour Longfellow’s monotonously consistent

measures. Yet in doing so he remained faithful to his determination to sacrifice his music where necessary in order to preserve as faithfully as he could the full value of the poet’s words. ‘The music," he said, "is only justified if it speaks in the language of the poem." He produced a work. of such colour, beauty, and drama that it is worthy of a place beside the great religious cantatas of the masters. Listeners to 1YA will hear a performance of Hiawatha by the Auckland Choral Society and the 1YA Studio Orchestra from the Auckland Town Hall at 8.0 p.m. on Saturday, July 12, Constance Manning (soprano), Joseph Battersby (tenor), and Stewart Harvey (baritone) will be the soloists, and Georg Tintner will conduct. Still the Blood is Strong "THE way things seem to be shaping, the Pakistan movement is one that may well start. a fashion, As» a contributor pointed ‘out in our last issue, the idea ‘is catching on in Scotland. This week we notice that portion of a South Island Reunion Ball is te be broadcast from Hastings, through station 2YH! True, we may be reading more into the item than circumstances warrant, but it is equally true that less substantial straws have shown which way the wind is blowing. Those who will junket at Hastings on July 9 (8.30 p.m. is the hour of broadcast) may be nothing more than the usual gathering

of DP’s separated by mountains and the waste of seas from their ain folk on the Mainland. But you never know with those Sudetenlanders. Letters from Pioneers OW pleasant it can be to browse through a pile of old letters, seizing gleefully here and there upon some passing opinion, some half-earnest prophecy of the writer, and capping it with a fitting topicality of our own time, noting how little the humours of mankind change through the ‘ages. We dare®say that Norma Cooper’s task in compiling her new series of talks, Letters Home, which begins from 2YA on Friday, July 11, at 7.15 p.m., must have been of this congenial nature. Miss Cooper presents us with letters from some of the early settlers (most of them women, we note; the men were less communicative in those days) to the folks at home. The first two programmes are devoted to the writings of Charlotte Godley (John Robert’s wife) from Wellington in 1851 ‘and from Christchurch in 1851-53. She will be followed by Mary Taylor (a friend of Charlotte Bronté), Eliza Hobson (wife of the Governor), Sarah Selwyn (the Bishop’s lady), Sarah Stephens, of early Nelson,- and the missionary family Williams. Dickens Characters HE cheerful, though debt-ridden Dick Swiveller of The Old Curiosity Shop will be the subject of the programme in the new BBC literary series, "Dickens Characters," to be heard from 1YA at 7.30 p.m., Monday, July 7. This same programme will also be broadcast from 2YA at 7.52 p.m., Wednesday, July while listeners to 4YA at 2 p.m.; Sun day, July 13, will hear a study of Sam¥’ > Weller. The series, which will be broadcast from other stations later, also introduces Mr. Pecksniff, the Micawbers, Mrs. Gamp, Tony Weller, Mr. Squeers, Sydney Carton, Miss Chick and Miss Tox, and other Dickens creations. V. C. Clinton Baddeley wrote the programmes, which were produced by Leslie Stokes, one of the men in charge of the BBC’s Third Programme.