THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 425, 15 August 1947, Page 4

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The Programmes

Rachmaninoff and his Music ECAUSE of its tremendous popularity with the public, with its perfect form, pleasing rhythms and opportunities for displays of virtuosity by the soloist, Rachmaninoff’s , second Piano Concerto has attracted pianists of all degrees of ability ever since it was published in 1901, but none of them has yet played it as well as did its composer. He was as great a concert pianist as he was composer and it is fortunate for the world "that, although he died in 1943, his playing of this work (not less great, for all its popularity) can still be heard through the medium of gramophone records. These records will be heard by listeners to 4YA on Tuesday, August 19, at 3.0 p.m. in one of a series of programmes featuring Rachmaninoff’s major works, Other programmes in the series will be heard on August 18 at 3.30 p.m. (first concerto), at 3.0 p.m. on August 20 (Symphony No, 2-the first symphony has not been played since its failure in St. Petersburg in 1895), on August 21 (third concerto), and August 22 (third symphony and suite for two pianos). The composer himself is the soloist in all but the last-named work. Orchestral Fantasy LAN RAWSTHORNE, a_ young British composer, believes in the importance of specially written incidental music for films, two notable examples of his work in this field beifig the music for Burma Victory and The Captive Heart. He holds the view that incidental: music should scarcely be heard as music, but would be grievously missed ii it were not there. Listeners will shortiy hear his Cortéges, played by the orch--estra of the Royal Opera House, London, -and conducted by Constant Lambert. This work, recorded in the BBC studios, is a "fantasy overture,’ constructed out of musical elements of a _ processional character, varying from a stately funeral march to a lively tune, suggestirs, a mili‘tary parade. It will be played from 1YA on Friday, August 22; at 9.30 p.m. Courage at Sea | A TALE of a courageous exploit in | 1942 which won a man the British Empire Medal, and the Gold Medal of the Royal National Life-Boat Institution, will be heard from 4YZ at 9.45 p.m. on Friday, August 22. Its title is "Pat Murphy’s Mirecle," and it is one of the BBC series They Lived to Tell the Tale. Murphy, a North of Ireland man, was concerned in a fine piece of seamanship off the coast. of County Down, where the small fishing port of Newcastle looks. out to the Irish Sea. The arrangement for broadcasting was done by "Bee" (Gordon Boshell) and the programme was prepared by the BBC’s London Transcription Service. Unfinished Requiem N 1791, when Mozart’s health was showing signs of a.complete breakdown, he received a visit from a strangelooking man, dressed in grey, who offered him a commission to cbmpose 4 Requiem Mass for a patron whose name he did not give. Mozart accepted and set to work, but’ as he wrote he became

obsessed with the idea that the stranger had been a supernatural being and that he was writing his own requiem. There was, as it turned out, nothing sinister about his visitor at all (he was the Steward of a wealthy nobleman), but by the end of the year Mozart was dead, and his iast great work remained unfinished. Listeners to. 3YA on Sunday, August 24, at 3.0 p.m., will hear the Mass performed by the University of Pennsylvania Choral Society and the Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Harl McDonald. Here They Are Again EFORE Noel Coward had ever thought of imploring his Mrs. Worthington not to put her daughter on the stage, Queen Victoria had expressed her fears of the world that lies behind the footlights. and its pitfalls for the sus-

ceptible. In a letter to the tutor of Prince Arthur (afterwards the Duke of Connaught) she "hoped and trusted that he never went ; behind the scenes on / his visits to thee theatre." Since the first Competitions were held in Well-

ington many thousands-old and young -have gone back stage and escaped unscathed. Now the Competitions are with us again. Station 2YA will broadcast items from the Town Hall from 8.15 to 9.0 p.m, on Saturday, August 23; Saturday, August 30; and Saturday, September 6. In addition, on Wednesday, August 27, the radio vocal test will be broadcast betweer 8.35 and 8.50 p.m. This test takes place before a microphone in the 2YA studio, and is heard by the judges in the Town Hall just as the ordinary listener hears it. From Monday to Friday each week results will be announced thrice daily by 2YA-at 3.50 p.m., between 7.0 and 7.15 p.m., and at 10.20 p.m. On Saturdays the results will be heard at 1.30 p.mg4 7.20 p.m. and 10.50 p.m. The speech test will be judged ‘at the NZBS recording studios by the Director of Broadcasting (Professor James Shelley) and the Supervisor of Production (Bernard Beéeeby). The Auckland Competitions will also begin on Saturday, August 23, and the evening session will be broadcast through station 1ZM on relay from the Town Hall from 7.30 p.m., when verse-speaking choirs and school choirs will be heard. The competitions will continue throughout the school holidays until September 6. Adjudicators will be John Lester (elocution), John Leech and Roy Spackman (vocal), Albert Bryant (instrumental), Constance McDonald (dancing), and F. H. Sutherland (Scottish items). Diaghilef's Influence NE of the most unusual figures in the world of the arts was Serge Pavlovitch Diaghilef. During the whole of his adult life he was a major influence in ballet, music and painting, yet he was not a dancer, not a composer, not an artist, nor yet again was he merely a patron. Often he is described as an impresario but this is an over-simplification. The key to his place in the arts is probably

best given in Arnold Haskell’s description of him at St. Petersburg University, where he joined a group of earnest young intellectuals, soon becoming the leader of the group-‘the man who could put their theories into practical reality." From one of his friends Diaghilef would take an idea and translate it into practical possibilities, introduce it to a painter, a composer and a choreographer, and throughout the formative period he would stimulate, suggest and criticise until the idea was a concrete entity in which the arts of music, painting and dancing qvere fused. This month falls the 18th anniversary of the death of Diaghilef, and 1YX will present at 9.0 p.m. on Sunday, August 24, at 45minute appraisal of his significance in the ballet. Winner Takes All ‘THE Princess Turandot (from whom Puccini’s opera Turandot takes its name), must have been a_ particularly eligible young spinster, for although her promise to marry any comer who could answer correctly three riddles was offset by the condition of death for failure, there appears to have been no dearth of applicants. Of course, it is a disguised young prince who gets her; and by way of added dramatic interest the audience is provided with the spectacle of a juicy suicide somewhere in Act III. It is a silly story-one with which W. S. Gilbert would have been quite \ in his element-but it is the music that 4 matters. The composer of La Boheme, La Tosca and Madame Butterfly does not let us down, although the work was composed at a time when his health was on the decline-in fact, his death necessitated the completion of the last act by someone else (who did it remarkably well). Listeners to 1YA at 8.15 p.m. on Sunday, August 24, will hear Turandot broadcast in its entirety.