THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 422, 25 July 1947, Page 4

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The Programmes

Swift Journey -"PHIRTY-THOUSAND miles in four weeks is quite a journey, even by present-day standards. But Leonard Cottreli, BBC producer and _script-writer, made it to gather material for his radio- | travelogue, Flying Visit, which reconstructs the experiences of a civilian pas--senger flying over the Empire air-route between Lordon and Sydney. Cottrell flew entirely in civil aircraft operated ‘by the British Overseas Airways Corporation. In writing the programmesFlying Visit is broadcast in four parts -he combines a vivid description of the actual flight with pictures of the countries he passed through. To do this he "stopped off" for over a week in Cairo, five days in Karachi and six days in Sydney, as well as making night stops at various other places, such as Salalah on the Hadhramut coast and Asmara in Eritrea. In some of these places he made special recordings-bazaar noises from Cairo, Bedouin music and so on-and he has used this background material to build the picture of air travel at the present day. The first episode of Flying Visit will be heard from 2YA this Sunday, July 27, at 9.30 am., and the second on August 3. (Leonard Cottrell’s photograph appears on page 21). Mortal Comedy ISTENERS who are familiar with the extravagantly fanciful brand of comedy which the two English actors, Naunton Wayne and Basil Radford, bring to the microphone, and who would welcome some more of it, should make a note of an item on 2YA’s programme at 8.20 p.m. on Monday, July 28. They will hear the first episode of a new BBC serial, Double Bedlam, described in the programmes as a comedy-thriller. But though there are enough dead bodies about to give a mortician a good start in life, the comedy side is predominant. Wayne and Radford play the "silly ass" types, treating the most outrageous circumstances as perfectly natural. The show opens with their arrival at a country inn to attend a race meeting, and the first thing they discover in their room is a body. Listeners will trip over quite a few more corpses before they and Detectives Wayne and Radford find out who killed who, and why. Mixed Bag USTRALIA and Canada are represented in the latest Music in Miniature programme from the BBC to come from 1YA on Wednesday, July 30, at 9.45 p.m. The performers will be George Thaiben-Ball (Australian organist), the Winnipeg violinist David Martin, and Irene Kohler (piano), Rene Soames (tenor), Max Gilbert (viola) and William Pleeth (’cello).. Thalben-Ball has spent most of his life in England where he is a distinguished teacher of the organ. David Martin has broadcast frequently for the BBC, both as a soloist and with quartets and other combinations. Gilbert (who is principal viola in the Boyd Neel Orchestra, and was heard from 2YA in a studio, recital recently), tells an amusing story against himself. During his war service in the RAF, he took part in the film Target for To-night, and was taken for a flight by one of the pilots who made the bombing raids in the: picture. Suddenly the pilot staggered Gilbert by handing

de him the controls, saying casually, "It’s all yours now." After they landed he remarked, "Now we’re quits; I’m scared of chamber music." Shield Rugby INCE Otago won the Ranfurly Shield from Canterbury at the end of the 1935 Rugby season, it has been held by Otago or Southland. Other provinces have challenged, but the shield has reposed at the south end of the South Island for 12 years. Southland have held the shield now since 1938 (no matches were played during the war), It has become a tradition in the deep south

that no matter which of the two provinces have it, the first challenge for the shield shall be from one of them; and that is why Otago’s challenge is the first to be played this year, Whoever holds the shield after the coming match will be in for one of the most interesting seasons for some time, because a strong North Auckland side has challenged, and so, too, has the always formidable Auckland Union.-There will be a full commentary on the first Ranfurly Shield match of this season from Station 4YZ Invercargill, starting at 2.45 p.m. on Saturday, August 2. The result of this match and of other representative fixtures will be given in the station link-up at 6.40 p.m., so that all New Zealand may hear them. Harold and Hector ERLIOZ loved the Italian countryside. With a guitar and a gun he would spend days tramping in the rugged mountains, shooting wildfowl and conversing with the inhabitants’ of the remote villages through which his way took him, sometimes dancing with them or playing tunes for them on his guitar. He even mixed with the brigands he met in those lonely places and saw something of their wild, carefree life. From this treasury of picturesque experience he was later able to draw when composing Harold in Italy, a symphony with parts for solo viola, based on Byron’s Childe Harold. This work, every bit as vivid as his Symphonie Fantastique, will be heard by listeners to 2YA on Tuesday, July 29, at 9.30 p.m. when it will be played by William Primrose (viola) and the Boston, Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Koussevitsky. Colourful N music, strings are (relatively) emotionally sober, brass exciting; in colours black is emotionally sober, red exciting. The vague general emotion aroused equally by a sound and a sight thus serves to link colour and music. Some link of this kind probably underlay Zola’s reported remark to Daudet

oo -O that the clarinet represents sensual love, while the flute, at most, represents platonic love. As long ago as the 16th Century, ja Jesuit priest and professor of mathematics and physics, Athanasius Kircher, said that everything visible could be made audible, and vice versa. Since then, scores of musicians and scientists have done research work on the subject of synaesthesia, and "colour music" has been produced by organs and other instruments. Station 1YX on Saturday, August 2, at 9.0 p.m., will present a feature, Colour and Sound-a programme designed to show some of the relationship music may bear to painting. Pocahontas NE of the best-known, and most romantic, stories of early American history is that of ‘Captain John Smith and the Indien Princess Pocahontas, The story (according to tradition) began when Smith, exploring the Chickahominy River, was waylaid by Indians and takén prisoner by Pocahontas’ father Powhatan. He was about to be executed when the girl-little more than a child -interceded with her father and saved the English sailor’s life. That was, however, only the beginning of the story. Pocahontas had fallen in love with the stranger-and appears to have remained in love with him until her death.’ But Captain John Smith seems to have been strangely unaware until too late, of the depth of her feeling for him. Pocahontas married an English settler, John Rolfe, and mafy prominent Virginian families still trace their descent to the son of this marriage. At one time Pocahontas visited England and was m much of there as the daughter of an ¥ Indian "emperor" and the first member ~ of her tribe to embrace Christianity. Her story has been set to music by Francesco B. de Leone, in the form of a cantata, which will be sung from 4YA at 8.1 p.m. on Monday, July 28, by the Otago Girls’ High School Choir, conducted ~

by

C. Roy

Spackman