THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 429, 12 September 1947, Page 4

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The Programmes

Middle East te S. HOSE who feel they ought to know : more about the way of life of the mixed population of Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Syria will be able to pick up some first-hand information during a half-hour programme from 2YA | beginning at 9.30 a.m. this Sunday, September 14. R. D. Smith, BBC pro‘ducer and _script-writer, spent many years in this area gathering material for his documentary story of the Middle East Supply Commission in the early days of the war. At that time the question on everybody’s lips was, "Can we held the Middle East?" and one of Britain’s first tasks was to obtain food ae the starving peoples of that area. The natives were being subjected to propaganda from Radio Bari, and because they believed they would be paid in worthless money, they hoarded their grain and refused to trade with the British. Middle East is not a war story but a telling social document about the suspicion and lack of faith with which many of the inhabitants of these lands regard the West. : It should help to throw some light on the problems which beset the British of Palestine at the precont time. "Elijah" from lavercargill 5 Severna 4, 1947, will be the centenary of the death of Felix Mendelssohn. When he died, in Leipzig, an English student is reported to have written home: "It is lovely weather here, but an awful stillness prevails. We feel as if the king were dead." In his 38 years Mendelssohn composed an almost incredible amount of music, and his oratorio Elijah is perhaps his highest achievement; it is certainly very close in popularity to Handel’s Messiah. Like Handel, Mendelssohn had many associations with the English, and the first performance of Elijah was made at the Birmingham Festival of 1846. In the following year, during his tenth and last visit to England, he conducted six performances of the work in London, Manchester and Birmingham, besides playing for two hours at Buckingham Palace before Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. This year’s performance of Elijah by the Invercargill Musical Union on Tuesday, September 16, will be broadcast from the Civic Theatre by Station 4YZ at 8.0 p.m. The Irish Theatre ANY listeners are by now familiar with the part played by the Abbey Theatre in the revival of the drama in Treland-and in England, too, at the beginning of this century. The poets Yeats and Russell are usually given the credit for founding the group in 1904, and the movement entered its first great period with the accession of Lady Gregory, Synge, and Padriac Colum as its principal dramatists. Some critics are of the opinion that the Abbey Theatre has now entered a period of decline (which heean after the rejection of Sean O’Casey’s- play The Silver Tassie), and that it is at the moment of less importance than other companies such as the Gate Theatre and the Lord Longford Players. But this can also be regarded as an indication that the professional.

theatre in Ireland is still in a flourishing condition. In two talks from 2YA, James Crawford will describe the experiences and impressions obtained during a stay in Ireland last year. He tells an interesting story of new productions, actors and audiences. (gallery seats at the Abbey cost only ninepence), and has also something to say about amateur performances, which he considers, incidentally, to be of a lower standard than those in New Zealand. Since his return to this country James Crawford has himself played a leading part in Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World, which was produced in Wellington recently. The first of these talks on the Irish Theatre will be heard on Friday, September 19, at 7.15 p.m. ‘Varsity Choir LTHOUGH the Auckland University College Music Club Choir has been in existence for over 10 years, it was only last year that it had its introduction to radio work, when it presented Bach's Jesu, Priceless Treasure from 1YA. The success of that broadcast led to a hope of giving a studio recital annually and this year the choir will again be on the air from 1YA at 8.4 p.m. on Saturday; September 20. The choir consists of 50 voices-soprano, alto, tenor and bassand will sing five English folk songs arranged by Vaughan Williams and three songs of praise by George Dyson. It will be conducted, in the absence of Professor H. Hollinrake in England, by R. G. Dellow, who is one of the senior students at the college. . Blind Guide F, by now, listeners have not sharpened their wits and powers of detection and deduction ("You know my methods, Watson; apply them") it will not be the fault of the NZBS. They have heard detective stories from the Transcription Service of the BBC, and in NZBS'plays, and ZB serials. A further opportunity for armchair detectives will be provided by 3YA at 8.0 p.m. on Thursday, September 18, in another NZBS production, No Time for Tea, written for radio by Edward Harding. In this play, listeners will be introduced to a new type of detective, a blind man whose brilliance as a criminologist leads him to discover an extensive black-market racket. The location could be anywhere, and it all starts with what appears to be an accidental death. But we shall leave 3YA listeners to find out the rest for themselves, Pelleas and Melisande ONLY a few of the operas written since ~ 1900 have left their mark on the modern development of the form. The first of these in time was Debussy’s Pelleas and Melisande, a setting of the play by Maeterlinck. On its first performance in Paris in 1902 the opera was bitterly attacked by the critics for its "deliberate refutation of Wagnerian principles" and the restrained conversational tone of its recitative, but these are the qualities which make it one of the great landmarks to-day. Even Maeterlinck himself is said to have expressed his disapproval, although this may have been because the principal part was not given to his wife, as he

had anticipated. The musical score captures in a remarkable way the elusiveness. characteristic of Maeterlinck’s work, and its general suggestiveness and lack of emotional stress creates an effect as remote and unreal as the play itself. Although it may not appeal to ardent Wagnerites, this opera is nevertheless a masterpiece of lyric drama containing much of that pure colour and transparency of tone which have made Debussy so popular. Those who love "impressionism" in music will be able to hear Pelleas and Melisande from 4YA on Sunday, September 27. The opera, which is in five acts, will be heard from 9.35 to 11.0 p.m. and will be preceded at 9.22 p.m. by the composer’s well-known Prelude a l’apres midi d’un Faune, played by the National Symphony Orchestra. Lived the Part ‘THE story goes that one of the children of Charles Dickens, who had iglien asleep in the novelist’s study, ‘awoke to be faced with a homicidal ‘maniac who rolled his eyes, gibbered _ and clawed the air.. It was Dickens, ~ carried away by the character of Quilp, > a which he was creating as he wrote The Old Curiosity Shop. Certainly Dickens spared nothing in his picture of the villainous dwarf, who comes to life again with his servile confederate, Sampson Brass, in the programme in the BBC series of Dickens Characters to be heard from 1YA at 8.10 p.m. on Friday, September 19.