THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 420, 11 July 1947, Page 4

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The Programmes

The Great God Pan MANY plays have been’ written around the doings of Pan, most of them having for theme the panic and pandemonium with which his name is generally associated. Edmund Barclay’s fantasy-drama The Piper which will be heard by listeners to 4YA at 9.30 p.m. this Sunday, July 13, seeks to show the Goat-Foot in a different mood, when | he steps into the lives of an impover- | ished English farmer and his family, | changes their fortunes and falls for the daughter of the house. The Piper has been heard only once before, having been broadcast by 2YC at the end of last year. The Luton Band [N the "Brass Bandstand" session which 4YA is to broadcast at 3.0 p.m. on Monday, July 14, you will hear the Luton Band, the only Southern English band to win the National Championship, which it did in 1944, Like so many of the leading English bands, the Luton Band has its home in a manufacturing town. Until men’s fashions changed, Luton manufactured enormous quantities of straw hats, but nowadays the town’s activities have turned more to the building of automobiles (and vacuum cleaners). In this programme the Luton Band is conducted by Fred Mortimer, who also conducts Foden’s Motor Works Band in "Brass Bandstand." The Luton Band possesses an outstanding euphonium player in Arthur. Doyle, who plays an arrangement of a Mozart Rondo, originally written for the French horn. Music Week in Christchurch ‘HE Canterbury Music Festival has come round again with its usual varied and interesting programmes, The opening day-Saturday, July 19-will be devoted to a brass band and choral programme, including music by Holst, Mozart, and Parry. Monday’s concert is again a choral one, and on Tuesday, July 22, chamber music by Beethoven, Haydn, Chopin, and Cesar Franck will be heard. Another programme of choral works will be heard on Wednesday, followed on Thursday by a choral and orchestral concert in which a Mozart piano concerto will be the featured item. On Friday, July 25, the Grand Six Towns Festival will take place. The occasion will be rounded off on July 26 by another choral and orchestral concert. Each of the programmes mentioned will be broadcast by 3YA, and each broadcast will begin at 8.0 p.m. Sound and Fury HE agony of a professional wrestler whose arms and legs have suffered some superficial rearrangement at the hands of an opponent has to be seen to be disbelieved, and the changing pageant of emotions expressed so vividly by normally rugged features is an invaluable lesson to any student of mime. But these are joys reserved for ringside spectators, and the radio listener has no part in them, All things, however, are not denied him. He has a whole saturnalia of sound-effects to build up and sustain his excitement — the variablepitched neigh of the flying mare, the

creak of body-presses and the dry clashing of Boston crabs, the dull thud of dropkicks, and the rasp of elbow-jolts, not to mention the feverish ticking of

the seconds in their corners. During the coming week, listeners will have the choice of three wrestling commentaries from the YA stations-from 1YA on Monday, July 14, at 9.5 p.m.; from

2YA on Thursday, July 17, at 9.30 p.m.; and from 3YA on Tuesday, July 15, at 8.45 p.m. For those who prefer the Marquess of Queensberry’s rules, 2YA will broadcast a commentary on a boxing match on Monday, July 14, at 9.0 p.m. Eighteenth Century Satirist |. VEN the hard-to-please Dr. Johnson admired Samuel Foote. Garrick was his friend, and Reynolds painted his portrait. But many of his contemporaries would have been glad to have seen the back of him and to have heard no more from his biting pen! "The English Aristophanes," as they called him, was born in Truro and educated at Oxford. He inherited a fortune, spent it, married his washerwoman and took to the stage. An unsuccessful attempt at _ genteel comedy led him to the discovery of his gifts for mimicry which he at once put to use, to the discomfort of his fellows. The actors, and actresses of the day, the Methodists, the. East India Company, Italian opera and selected representatives of high society all found themselves the butt of his satirical humour in the plays he wrote for himself to appear in. Though some of them managed to have his activities suppressed now and then, he usually managed to find some way round the difficulties, and eventually, in that very way, brought about his own undoing. Samuel Foote is the subject of the readings by Professor T. D. Adams on Friday, July 18, from 4YA at 9.33 p.m. Kendall Taylor HE pianist in the "Music in Miniature" programme to be heard from 1YA on Wednesday, July 16 (at 9.45 p.m.) is Kendall Taylor. The other artists will be Barbara Mullen (soprano), Reginald Kell (clarinet), and _ the Zorian String Quartet. The items, you will find, make up an unusual, stimulating half-hour. Kendall Taylor, pianist and the son of a ’cellist, gained his first musical experiences when playing accompaniments for his father at the age of four. When he was only 24 he was appointed to the staff of the Royal College of Music, London, thus becoming one of the youngest professors on record at the college. He has had considerable success as a solo pianist in England, but is quite different from the longhaired, poetic musicians of the comic press. Very much an out-of-door man, he plays to a golf handicap of 4 when in form, and only wishes he could make it plus 4. > Exacting Concerto . ILLIAM WALTON’S Violin Concerto has a romantic history. He wrote it at the beginning of the war for Jascha Heifetz, to whom he granted the

sole rights of performance for a period of two years. When the completed score was being transported across the Atlantic to the violinist for its first performance misfortune overtook it and it went to the bottom of the sea. Fortunately, however, photographic copies of it had been made in England, so no harm was done. Due to the fact that it is so fiendishly difficult to play, the work is seldom performed, but Heifetz made a recording of it with the Cincinnati Symphony Ors chestra conducted by Eugene Goossens, and this can be heard by listeners to 1YA at 7.59 p.m. on Friday, July 18. The opinions of the critics as to the merits of the work have been divided, but those listeners who do not enjoy the music can at least sit back and marvel at the way Heifetz copes with the succession of technical problems the composer has set him. Songs by Tracy Moresby N Sunday afternoon, July 20 (at 4.15 p.m.), over 2YA, the former Auckland singer Rena Edwards will sing a group of songs composed by Tracy Moresby, of Auckland... Mrs. Edwards was a well-known soprano in Auckland before she left there a year or two ago. She now lives at Titahi Bay, where her husband is engineer in charge of the 2YA transmitter. The seven songs are "The Sky Is Up Above the Roof" (Verlaine, translated by Dowson), "My Silks and Fine Array" (Blake), "When I Am De My Dearest" (Rossetti), "The Meri Month of May" (Dekker), "The Sh herd’s Description of Love" (Raleigh), "The Twelve Oxen" (anonymous), and . "Eldorado" (Poe). The Raleigh and the/ Poe were composed while Mr. Morésby was in the Middle East, and most of the others are older. The first one was sung by Michael Head (accompanying himself) when he visited New Zealand some years ago. Tracy Moresby, a former organist, is now teaching music in Auckland.