THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 423, 1 August 1947, Page 4

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The Programmes

On the Ball [HE next talk in Station 3YA’s Winter Course series under the title, Canterbury from the Early Days, will be about New Zealand’s national sport, Rugby. And the man chosen to give it is A. I. ("Beau") Cottrell, who is regarded in football circles as one of the soundest authorities on the technique of the game in New Zealand. Cottrell played for New Zealand as a front-row forward in the team that visited Australia in, 1929, for New Zealand against the British team in 1930, for New Zcaland against Australia in the Dominion in 1931, and again on a visit to Australia in 1932. The talk will be heard at 9.19 p.m. on Monday, August 4. Music From Finland STATION 4YZ starts a new series of programmes on Tuesday, August 5, dealing with the.symphonies of Jean Sibelius, the contemporary Finnish composer. The history of music throughout the world records few instances of a composer being assisted by the people of his own country to the extent that the Finnish State has provided for Sibelius. In 1930 he was given a grant for life to enable him to devote his time | entirely to music, and arrangements were later made for his works to be recorded, in order that they should have every opportunity of widespread recog_nition. The series starts with the Sym- | phony No. 1 in E Minor, Opus 39, and | the conductor will be Robert Kajanus, | Sibelius’ compatriot, whose name is so | often associated with the works of the | composer. Talks by Rewa Glenn |] ISTENERS to 2YA on Monday, August 4, at 10.25 a.m. will hear the | first of a series of talks by Rewa Glenn |under the heading The Moving Finger | Writes. The first talk deals with early Maori life around the Queen Charlotte Sounds, with particular reference to the historic island of Arapawa. The following week Rewa Glenn will talk about whaling, and the final talk will deal with bird life. Tchaikovski Undefiled O great composer has more often fallen prey to the vultures of the popular music world than has Tchaikovski. His sweeping, superbly coloured melodies which have ‘drawn his music to the attention of so many genuine music-lovers in every part of the world have been ransacked, mangled, twisted to fit lines of cheaply sentimental dog- gerel and poured oozing back into the world at a far greater financial profit to the self-styled song writers of to-day than Tchaikovski ever made ‘from his music. But there are many, fortunately, who would still rather hear this great composer’s works as he intended them to be heard, and who will welcome the news that Tchaikovski is to be the "Featured Composer" of~4YO this coming week. Programmes of his music will be heard on August 6, 7, and 8 at 10.0 p.m, Whitman and Delius PERFORMANCE of Frederick Delius’s Sea Drift will be heard by listeners to 4YA on Thursday, August 7, at 3.0 p.m. This work, based upon Walt Whitman’s "Out of the cradle endlessly rocking" (the first of the poems

comprising his Sea Drift) is scored for baritone, chorus and orchestra, and contains some of the composer’s finest work. Philip Heseltine ("Peter Warlock’’) said of it: "In this music we seem to hear the very quintessence of all the sorrow and unrest that man can feel because of love. It is the veritable drama of love and death, an image of the mystery of separation." It will be played by the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the London Select Choir, conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham, who is renowned as the greatest interpreter of Delius’s music. The soloist will be John Brownlee. The ‘Atom and the Future /HAT is to be done about atomic energy is a question uppermost in the minds of many people, but there are also many who do not grasp the full implication of this new force that has been released on the world. A _ programme from the BBC, through 3YA, may clarify the position for them. Atomic Energy, a BBC transcription, was written and produced by Nesta

Pain. Scientific advice on the production was given by Professor R.-Peierls, F.R.S., of Birmingham University. Nesta Pain presents the story in dramatic form, from the explosion of the first experimental bomb in July, 1945, when the steel tower on which it was exploded disappeared almost entirely, and the floor of the desert for a third of a mile round was fused into a sheet of glass. She goes on to picture some of the beneficial uses to which atomic energy might be put, and ends on a note of grim warning, with a description of what might happen if an atomic bomb exploded over the centre of London. Atomic Energy will be heard at 8.26 p.m. on Saturday, August 9. Schools’ Music Festivals USIC festivals seem to be in the air -and on the air-a good deal these days. The Christchurch Primary Schools’ Festival will be broadcast by 3YL at 7.30 p.m. on Friday, August 8. Works for choir and orchestra, and choral speaking, will be included, and among the composers to be represented will be Haydn, Mendelssohn, Dr. Arne, and Arensky. On Wednesday, August 6, listeners to 4YA at 7.30 p.m. will hear the 1947 Choral Festival of the South Otago schools, relayed from the Britannia Theatre, Balclutha. Powder and Patch ACCORDING to G. V. Septimus Piesse, in his Art of Perfumery, a bill was introduced into the English Parliament in 1770 containing .this drastic provision: "That all women of whatever age, rank, profession or degree, whether virgins, maids or widows, that

shall, from and after such Act, impose upon, seduce, and betray into matrimony, any of His Majesty’s subjects, by scents, paints, cosmetic washes, artificial teeth; false hair, Spanish wool, iron stays, hoops, high-heeled shoes, bolstered hips, shall incur the penalty of the law in force against witchcraft, and like misdemeanours, and that the marriage, upon conviction, shall stand null and void." Modern woman has travelled a long way from such austerities and though the claims made today for some cosmetics suggest that their former association with witchcraft was more than justified, no politician who valued the flapper vote would dare to voice the suspicion that their effect on morale was anything but good. "More About Cosmetics" will be heard in an A.C.E. talk to be broadcast by 1YA on Thursday, August 7, at 10.45 a.m., and by 3YA the same. day at 2.30 p.m. A Little Light Music IGHT music recorded in a BBC studio by The Masqueraders under their conductor, Eric Robinson, is intended to give listeners memories from the London theatre-a song from the turn of the century, a tune from a modern revue, and a parade of successes which made the musical comedies of the last 50 years. Station 1YA will present The Masqueraders at 8.32 p.m. on Tuesday, August 5, when some of the orchestral music of Fraser-Simson, a selection by Paul Rubens, and an excerpt from Magyar Melody (Posford), which drew Londoners to His Majesty’s Theatre in 1938, will be heard.