MUSIC FROM THE ZB'S

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 421, 18 July 1947, Page 15

MUSIC FROM THE ZB'S

"THE history of the Glasgow Orpheus ' Choir goes back to 1901, when Sir Hugh Roberton took up the leadership of what was then the choir of Toynbee House, Glasgow. By 1903 the Orpheus Choir has started a series of recitals that sent its fame far abroad. In 1926 the choir had great successes in Canada and the United States, and it sang at Balmoral, at No. 10 Downing Street, and in the Albert Hall. Its repertoire to-day contains hundreds of Scottish songs, while some of Elgar’s unaccompanied choral works are identified especially with the Orpheus Choir’s’ performance of them. Listeners to 2ZB on Monday, July 21, at 9.45 p.m. will hear a number of this choir’s recordings, bd Bsa *, NE night, at \the beginning of this century (so the story goes), a. young honeymoon couple were dining in a small, obscure Paris restaurant. When the time came to pay, the husband discovered that his wallet, containing all his cash and return ticket to. Vienna, had been stolen. A generous cafe proprietor advanced the pair enough money to get them home. The young husband said he would repay by making both the cafe and its proprietor famous. Franz Lehar was as good as his word, for a. few years later he wrote The Merry Widow, with its well-known "Cafe Maxim" song. Selections from The Merry Widow will be heard from 2ZB on Saturday, July 26, at 3.0 p.m. : 1% Bg as T is said that Spike Jones cheerfully admits that he has set music back a thousand years. But it is a. set-back unlikely to cause much worry. The gay inconsequence with which he approaches music has produced a type of humour that, if not altogether new, is certainly unusual. His iconoclastic bent is more noticeable in his disarrangements of Tchaikovski’s Nutcracker Suite, in Cocktails for Two and in his version of Holiday for Strings. But although his City Slickers trade in musical insanity, they give a lesson in precision and timing, as will be apparent to 1ZB listeners if they listen to a special Spike Jones programme, Serenade with Spikowski on Sunday, July 20,:at 3.30 p.m. cet a en rn