THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 424, 8 August 1947, Page 4

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The Programmes

Shakespeare and Society HE inseparables, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, are the characters from Shakespeare whom Herbert Farjeon wil] dissect for listeners in a BBC programme to come from 1YA next week. It has sometimes been seriously suggested that Shakespeare might better have compressed the pair into a single entity-Guild-encrantz or Rosenstern, if you like-but Goethe differed strongly from this view. It is impossible to represent by one what these persons are and do, he wrote; there ought to be a dozen of these people, if they could be had, for it is only in society that they are anything; they are society itself. This half-hour item, produced by Douglas Clevedon, will be heard from 1YA at 7.46 p.m. on Monday, August, 11. National Orchestra in Christchurch WO concerts by the National Orchestra, under the baton of Warwick Braithwaite, will be broadcast by 3YA next week. The first, at 8.0 p.m. on Wednesday, August 13, will include Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, and Vaughan Williams’s "Fantasia on a Theme by Tallis," as well as works by Wagner, Liszt and Delius. The programme for the second concert, on Friday, August 15, at 8.0 p.m., has for its main works Brahms’s Fourth Symphony in E Minor, Mendelssohn’s E Minor Violin Concerto, and works by Schubert and Edward German. Soloist in the Concerto will be Robert Pikler, the Hungarina violinist, who has become well known to New Zealand audiences through his recitals with Lili Kraus. Life Study "STRETCH me no longer on this rough ~~ world," wrote Benjamin Haydon, and shot himself. Despite a distinguished career the painter’s life had been a hard one. He studied at the Royal Academy and while still in his twenties exhibited his work with a success that brought him the freedom of the Borough of Plymouth. But like many another talented artist he had his pecuniary troubles and in 1823 found himself a prisoner in the King’s Bench. He received professions of sympathy from several prominent figures of the day and later, what was more consoling, a prize of £500 from the King himself for his picture the "Mock Election," inspired by an incident he had witnessed in prison. But his difficulties continued and in 1846 he decided to put an end to it all. The Large Canvas, a BBC programme which will be heard by listeners to 2YA at 8.0 p.m. on Friday, August 15, is the dramatized story of Haydon’s life. Esme Percy is amongst the performers. Royal Auckland Choir N 1892 the Royal Auckland Choir held its first concert, and it has continued to hold them every year since. Four concerts were given annually in the early days, but about the time of World War I the number was reduced to three. This

year its second two-day concert will begin on Saturday, August 16, and listeners to 1YA at 8.0 p.m. will hear the first half of the programme, when the choir will present "The Coasts of Barbary," "Deck Thyself My Soul with Gladness," "Songs of Praise" (‘‘Festgesang"), "Salamis," and "The Pilgrims’ Chorus." Valerie Isbister (soprano) and Eric Craig (violinist) will be the soloists. The choir, consisting of 65 voices, will be under the baton of Harry Woolley, who has conducted it for the last ten years, and Alan Pow will be at the piano, Take it Away! ONEY is something in which we are all interested. It is everywhere about us, but mostly, it seems, in the pockets of others, and what little personal contact- we have with it is but momentary. It passes as it came, leaving few traces of its having been through our hands, Its habits are as capricious

as those of a woman, and as difficult to comprehend. The poets and dreamers despise it, the hardheads glorify it, and we all grub after it as hard as we can go. William Hazlitt had something to

say about’ it, although his words, we imagine, are less lurid than most of ours usually are when called upon to air our opinions upon the matter. Listeners to 4YA on Friday, August 15, at 9.34 p.m., will have an opportunity of deciding whether they agree or disagree with the famous essayist when Professor T. D. Adams presents readings from Hazlitt’s "On the want of money."

Rabelaisian Royalist IR THOMAS URQUHART of Cromarty was one whom eccentricity and vanity set apart from his fellows but nothing which he did in life was so eccentric as his leaving it, for (if report be true) he died laughing. A man of considerable ability and learning whose eccentricity verged upon insanity, he is said to have died from the effects of an uncontrollable fit of joyful laughter on hearing the news of the Restoration. Urquhart was, of course, a Royalist. He fought against the Scottish Covenanters, and he spent some time in the Tower of London-and later on the Continent. But he is not remembered for his political activities. His masterpiece was his translation of Rabelais, remarkable more for the way in which it captured the spirit of the original than for its textual accuracy. This great work, however, is not likely to be the sole topic in John Reid’s talk, "The Obsessions of Thomas Urquhart," in the 1YA By-paths of Literature series on Friday, August 15, at 8.41 p.m. Indeed, Urquhart’s Rabelais would hardly fit into a by-path, being itself one of the more verdant sections of the broader primrose path, but it is likely that listeners will also hear something of Urquhart’s other literary activities, such as his scheme for a universal language, his writings* on trigonometry,

and perhaps even that strange extravagance, the genealogy of his family, which he traced through his father back to Adam, and through his mother back to Eve. Extra Special Correspondent

"|F only persons of former ages who were placed at the centre of affairs," wrote Horace Walpole, "had set down accurately and without ostentation and flourish the occurrences of their own times, how much would we have been the gainers!" How much we to-day are the gainers through Walpole’s unmatched facility in that field would be difficult to estimate. As the youngest son of Sir Robert Walpole, the great prime minister, Horace Walpole certainly lived in the centre of affairs, and to the end of his days was an indefatigable chronicler of the acts and speeches of both houses of Parliament. But it was as a letter-writer that he came closest to literary perfection, and in the view of most authorities no English writer in that field has surpassed him. But literary skill and acute powers of observation were for Walpole only the tools with which he . discharged his self-imposed task of trans mitting to posterity a minutely accurates picture of the life of his time. The great historical importance of his. letters and reports is fully recognised to-day. The letters of Horace Walpole will be the subject of a BBC programme in the series The Written Word, to be heard from 2YA on Sunday, August 17, at 4.30 p.m.