THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 426, 22 August 1947, Page 4

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The Programmes

Boyd Neel Talks EADERS of the article "Is the Conductor Really Necessary?" which appeared in a recent issue of The Listener were treated to some of the views of Boyd Neel (among others) on the ethics of baton-waving. Boyd Neel has something further to say about his profession, and also on the matter of applause (touched upon in the article on the behaviour of audiences which we published a short while ago), and these form the subjects of two of the three talks he has recorded for the NZBS, which will be heard by listeners to 2YA at 7.14 on August 29 ("To boo or not to boo"), on September 5 ("Is the conductor really necessary?"); amd on September 12 ("Some famous musical festivals"). Those who heard Neel’s first talk over the NZBS, shortly after his arrival in this country, will recall the smooth and pleasing manner of his delivery and will look forward to hearing him speak again, Back in Their Tracks | ISTENERS to Return Journey, a BBC programme which will be broadcast by 2YA at 9.30 a.m. on Sunday, August 31, will hear the well-known English author and broadcaster V. S. Pritchett recalling his childhood days in the wild Yorkshire fell country. Pritchett revisited the district recently, after an absence of 35 years, and saw for himself what changes had taken place amongst the people and the scenes he remembered so well. On Sunday, September 7, a further Return Journey will be described by the author, John Moore, who will take listeners with him to the old Gloucestershire town of Elmbury, where he spent his childhood, and will introduce us to some of the picturesque people who live there, the same people about whom Moore wrote so charmingly and amusingly in his best seller Portrait of Elmbury. : Community Centre ‘TEN years ago, L. J. Wild, formerly ‘headmaster of the Feilding Agricultural High School, concerned himself with the problem of school-leaving age. School life, he thought, was too short; there was so much still to learn. Why not provide for further education? So he opened, in the middle of the business area of Feilding, the Community Centre of Further Education, where the needs of adults could be met at times when their leisure allowede With the opening of the Centre L. J. Wild completed an organisation for the education of the community. It is now possible for a child of two years to go to the Play Centre, to take its first steps in the world beyond the home, to continue through the primary school to the High School where he may take one of half-a-dozen courses; to go to the Community Centre to study art or drama, or child psychology, or world affairs, to borrow books, to look at films, or take part in a dozen other pursuits! The Community Centre organisation, which has caught the attention of many an overseas visitor to New Zealand, will be discussed

in a Winter Course talk by H. C. D. Somerset, Director pf the Feilding Community Centre, from 2YA on Monday, August 25, at 7.15 p.m. This will be the first of a series of four weekly talks about the organisation. Noises On, Noises Off UIGI RUSSOLO, Italian futurist composer (born in 1885), sought new musical resources by using non-periodi-cal vibrations. He constructed, in Milan, a number of noise instruments, classifying the sounds according to method of production. But the few exhibitions he and his fellow futurists gave in, European cities were followed by even more violent disturbances from the unfortuNate audiences. Much nearer 1947 than that, Spike Jones decided that noisy musical nonsense was a highly profitable

stock-in-trade. He set about deflating some of the more pretentious popular tunes. He played Chloe "straight," then gave it all he had ("Chloe, where are you, you old bat, you.") He has even had a crack at Tchaikovski’s Nutcracker Suite. He uses (besides musica] instruments) wash-boards, crashing glass, police whistles, firearms, gurgles, gargles, and every conceivable noise emerging from the human larynx. Listeners to 4YZ will hear Spike Jones and his City Slickers for a quarter-of-an-hour (if they can last it out) from 2.0 p.m. on Tuesday, August 26. Housman on Edge HEN A. E. Housman first heard Vaughan Williams’s song cycle On Wenlock Edge, comprising settings of some of the lovely, sad poems from his Shropshire Lad, his reaction was curious and unaccountable. Said a friend later, "T beheld a face wrought and flushed with torment, a figure tense and bolt upright as though in an extremity of controlling pain or anger, or both." Housman was no music lover; music meant nothing to him, but others have been grateful that this finicky genius, who would not even permit any of his work to be included in anthologies, for fear of typographical errors, had consented to these settings being done, whatever he himself came to think of them. The words and music blend perfectly and the songs are among the best ever written by an English composer. Listeners to 2YA will hear On Wenlock Edge at 2.30 p.m. on Friday, August 29.

Cleaver on the Organ OR something like 10 yéars H. Robinson Cleaver has been playing the organ in leading cinemas all over Britain, and for much of that time he has been a popular broadcaster. Though he does most of his broadcasting "solo," he makes his cinema appearances as a double turn with his wife, Molly. The Cleavers present a varied act, alternating at organ and piano, They exchange instruments as they feel inclined, and, by way of variety, Molly Cleaver also plays the accordion. This partnership dates back to a day ina Manchester cinema where Mrs. Cleaver-to-be was pianist in the orchestra and Robinson Cleaver was the newly engaged organist. Listeners to 2YH will hear Robinson Cleaver at the organ at 9.30 p.m. on Sunday, August 31. Boult of the BBC "TO see Sir Adrian Boult, conductor-in-chief of the BBC, on the rostrum," says a writer on music, "is to watch a sensitive musician and conscientious artist at work." Boult always wanted to be a conductor. As a, schoolboy he was an ardent concert-goer, but there was nothing of the infant prodigy about him; his mother, a gifted musician, was against that sort of thing. He was conductor of the City of Birmingham Orchestra when the BBC, in 1930, invited him to become its Director of Music. Then his fame spread, and today he is a familiar and welcome visitor in Canada and the U.S. He was knight in 1937. In 1942 he relinquished the post of Director of Music at his own) request, to devote himself entirely to orchestral work. His bearing on the rostrum is utterly lacking in the histrionics or temperament that are found in some other conductors. On Wednesday, August 27, at 7.30 p.m., listeners to 3YA will hear the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir Adrian Boult, in Dance Rhapsody No. 1, by Frederick Delius.