THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 421, 18 July 1947, Page 4

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The Programmes

Very Early Days "T HE coming of the French surely made Banks Peninsula settlement unique in Australian and New Zcaland history. But what was it that led the French to choose this particular placeor indeed choose any spot at all? Certaigly it is true that all the early whalers delighted to provision there. They spoke with elation of the woods, the streams, the deafening choruses of tuis and bellbirds. But Peninsula history goes much further back than 1840, the Comte de Paris, and the Britomart. In our very earliest days it was the retreat of tattooed convicts from across the Tasman, and centuries before that the happy home of moa-hunters who may have tilled its fields as William the Conqueror marshalled his galleys for conquest. Early Days on Banks Peninsula is the title of a series of talks by Douglas Cresswell to be broadcast from 3YA on Fridays at 7.15 p.m. from July 18 to August 22, inclusive. Worth Waiting For "TWO New Zealand-born artists at present re-visiting their country will be heard in collaboration on Wednesday, July 23, when Warwick Braithwaite conducts and Colin Horsley is the soloist in. a concert by the National Orchestra to be broadcast from 4YA at 80 p.m. This will be the first of two concerts which Mr. Braithwaite will conduct in his home town. The principal works to be heard will be Schubert’s "Unfinished" Symphony and Schumann’s Piano Concerto, Uncertain though Schumann’s orchestration usually was, he was in his element when it came to writing for the piano. The concerto was started in 1841, one of his best years, and had its first performance in 1846 with the composer’s wife, Clara, playing the solo part. It is ' Schumann at his very best, and the work has been accleimed as one of the greatest of all piano concertos. Works by | Rimsky-Korsakov, Delius and Berlioz comprise the remainder of the pro gramme. Dolce Far Niente : ‘THIS is that carefree scason of the year when the home gardener has nothing to do but trim hedges, sow ‘lawns, plant shrubs, prune trees, mend | fences, dig in gr-en manure, humus, agricultural naphthalene, and anything else / within reach, tend spring bulbs, kill dormant pésts, and get his early spring crops well under way. With so much time hanging on his hands he should be ready to turn this Irisure to profit before sprine gets him fully occupied again, and how better than by listening to the’ Lincoln College talk, "Compost, Fertilisation, and Health" which 3YA will broadcast at 7.15 p.m. on Thursday, July 24? Indeed, the interest aroused in this topic by Sir Stanton Hicks, durine the recent science congress in Wellington, should ensure an even wider audi*nce for this broadcast. The sp-akers will be I. D. Blair and L. W. McCaskill. ; The Dream of Gerontius F-EW people had heard of Edward Elgar in 1900. He had been busily occupied in the ficld of amateur music but he was already in his thirties and his The Dream of Gerontius, the first of his great works, was only just about to

be performed. It was heard that year at the Birmingham Festival under Richter. It caused plenty of controversy but received little recognition and it was not until it was revived (in Germany) two years later that the public, following the lead of Richard Strauss, gave it the tribute it deserved. The work

is based on Cardinal Newman’s poem in which the dying Gerontius sees himself enter into the world to come and | explores some of its mysteries. The Dream of Gerontius will be presented by 3YA on Sunday, July 27, at 3.0 p.m. in the monthly series, Great Choral Works. Heddle Nash, Gladys Ripley and Dennis-~ Noble are the soloists, and the Huddersfield Choral Society and the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra are conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent. Crime For All "THROUGH 2YA, the BBC will shortly invite listeners, who lean towards amateur sleutMing, to assist in solving some meaty‘crime problems, This invitation will.come by way of a new BBC feature, Cal/ Yourself a Detective, the first episode of which will be on the air on Wednesday, July 23, at 9.30 p.m. Here is how it’s done. Ernest Dudley collects in a BBC studio a small audience, some "guest detectives," and a cast of actors. Two thumbnail sketches are performed in which the crook give himself or herself away. Dudley then invites the guest detectives to give their solutions of the crime. After that, members of the studio audience are asked to give their theories over the microphone. The guests include Jan Struther, author of Mrs. Miniver, who knows quite a lot about criminology. There are two professional detectives, ex-Chief Inspector J. Henry, of Scotland Yard, and John Horwell, once. Chief Constable of Scotland Yard’s CID, and now a private detective. Finally there is Valentine Dyall;. the Man in Black of Appointment with Fear-a strong team of "goodies" on the trail of one "baddie." The Sea in Verse |F Walt Whitman is to-day the most vital literary force America can show, it is because he began his work by imbibing’ something from every philosophy and every religion. During his life, from 1819 to 1892, he worked as a printer, a carpenter and a journalist. During the Civil War he was an army

nurse, and later he took up a Government post in Washington. Much of his verse carries the tang of the sea, for Long Island was his birthplace. Writing of it Whitman says: "The eastern end of Long Island, the Peconic Bay region, I knew quite well, too-sail’d more than once round Shelter Island, and down to Montauk-spent many an hour on Turtle Hill by the old lighthouse on the extreme point, looking over the ceaseless roll of the Atlantic. I used to like to go down there and fraternise with the blue-fishers, or the annual squads of sea-bass takers."’ Most of Whitman’s sea poems have been selected for presentation, with musical interludes from famous sea-pieces, from Station 3YA, under the title Walt Whitman Suggests Sea Music. One of three programmes has already been broadcast; the other two will be heard on Sunday, July 27, and Sunday, August 10, at 9,22 p.m. ’ For the Housewife ()F special interest to housewives will be a new series of talks, At the British Industries Fair, by Joan Airey, which begins on July 22, at 10.25 am., from 2YA. Miss Airey, a New Zealander now living near London, gives us her impressions of the B.LF. in three talks, the first of which is "Fashions atan~ British Industries Fair." The second in the series will follow a week later at the same time and will be entitled "Things to Come," and the final talk will be called "Science to the Rescue." Miss Airey will talk about household gadgets, labour-saving devices, fashions, plastics, and many other alluring things which housewives are looking forward to seeing on the market.